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Ebook has 201 lines and 20213 words, and 5 pages

And a whisper awoke on the wilderness, sighing, Like the voice of the heroes who battled in vain, "Not for Tearlach alone the red claymore was plying, But to bring back the old life that comes not again."

DECEMBER 31, 1787.

HERE'S a health to every man Bore the brunt of wind and weather; Winnowed sore by Fortune's fan, Faded faith of chief and clan: Nairne and Caryl stand together; Here's a health to every man Bore the brunt of wind and weather!

Oh, round Charlie many ran, When his foot was on the heather, When his sword shone in the van. Now at ending of his span, Gask and Caryl stand together!

Ne'er a hope from plot or plan, Ne'er a hope from rose or heather; Ay, the King's a broken man; Few will bless, and most will ban. Nairne and Caryl stand together!

Help is none from Crown or clan, France is false, a fluttered feather; But Kings are not made by man, Till God end what God began, Nairne and Caryl stand together, Gask and Caryl stand together; Here's a health to every man Bore the brunt of wind and weather!

THE honour of a loyal boy, The courage of a paladin, With maiden's mirth, the soul of joy, These dwelt her happy breast within. From shame, from doubt, from fear, from sin, As God's own angels was she free; Old worlds shall end, and new begin To be

Ere any come like her who fought For France, for freedom, for the King; Who counsel of redemption brought Whence even the armed Archangel's wing Might weary sore in voyaging; Who heard her Voices cry "Be free!" Such Maid no later human spring Shall see!

Saints Michael, Catherine, Margaret, Who sowed the seed that Thou must reap, If eyes of angels may be wet, And if the Saints have leave to weep, In Paradise one pain they keep, Maiden! one mortal memory, One sorrow that can never sleep, For Thee!

CRICKET RHYMES

ST. LEONARD'S HALL.

HELEN, thy bowling is to me Like that wise Alfred Shaw's of yore, Which gently broke the wickets three: From Alfred few could smack a four: Most difficult to score!

The music of the moaning sea, The rattle of the flying bails, The grey sad spires, the tawny sails-- What memories they bring to me, Beholding thee!

Upon our old monastic pitch, How sportsmanlike I see thee stand! The leather in thy lily hand, Oh, Helen of the yorkers, which Are nobly planned!

AH, where be Beldham now, and Brett, Barker, and Hogsflesh, where be they? Brett, of all bowlers fleetest yet That drove the bails in disarray? And Small that would, like Orpheus, play Till wild bulls followed his minstrelsy? Booker, and Quiddington, and May? Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

And where is Lambert, that would get The stumps with balls that broke astray? And Mann, whose balls would ricochet In almost an unholy way George Lear, that seldom let a bye, And Richard Nyren, grave and gray? Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

Tom Sueter, too, the ladies' pet, Brown that would bravest hearts affray; Walker, invincible when set, ; Think ye that we could match them, pray, These heroes of Broad-halfpenny, With Buck to hit, and Small to stay? Beneath the daisies, there they lie!

ENVOY.

Prince, canst thou moralise the lay? How all things change below the sky! Of Fry and Grace shall mortals say, "Beneath the daisies, there they lie!"

AFTER EMERSON.

CRITICAL OF LIFE, ART, AND LITERATURE

IN THE GROSVENOR GALLERY.

Think, when the tumult and the crowd Have left the solemn rooms and chill, When dilettanti are not loud, When lady critics are not shrill-- Ah, think how strange upon the still Dim air may sound these voices faint; Once more may Johnson talk his fill And fair Dalrymple charm the Saint!

Of us they speak as we of them, Like us, perchance, they criticise: Our wit, they vote, is Brummagem; Our beauty--dim to Devon's eyes! Their silks and lace our cloth despise, Their pumps--our boots that pad the mud, What modern fop with Walpole vies? With St. Leger what modern blood?

In Art the statesman yet shall live, With collars keen, with Roman nose; To Beauty yet shall Millais give The roses that outlast the rose: The lords of verse, the slaves of prose, On canvas yet shall seem alive, And charm the mob that comes and goes, And lives--in 1985.

Dear ladies, in vain you approach us, With books to your taste in your hands; For, alas! though you offer to coach us, Yet the soul of no man understands Why the grubby is always the moral, Why the nasty's preferred to the nice, While you keep up a secular quarrel With a gay little Vice;

Yes, a Vice with her lips full of laughter, A Vice with a rose in her hair, You condemn in the present and after, To darkness of utter despair: But a sin, if no rapture redeem it, But a passion that's pale and played out, Or in surgical hands--you esteem it Worth scribbling about!

There are cakes, there is ale--ay, and ginger Shall be hot in the mouth, as of old: And a villain, with cloak and with whinger, And a hero, in armour of gold, And a maid with a face like a lily, With a heart that is stainless and gay, Make a tale worth a world of the silly Sad trash of to-day!

WILD on the mountain peak the wind Repeats its old refrain, Like ghosts of mortals who have sinned, And fain would sin again.

For "wind" I do not rhyme to "mind," Like many mortal men, "Again" 'twere kind To rhyme as if "agen."

Oh, which are wrong or which are right? Oh, which are right or wrong? The sounds in prose familiar, quite, Or those we meet in song?

To hold that "love" can rhyme to "prove" Requires some force of will, Yet in the ancient lyric groove We meet them rhyming still.

This was our learned fathers' wont In prehistoric times, We follow it, or if we don't, We oft run short of rhymes.

Ye Oxford Dons that Cockneys be, Among your gardens tidy, If you would ask a maid to tea, D'ye call the girl "a lydy"? And if you'd sing of Mr. Fry, And need a rhyme to "swiper," Are you so cruel as to try To fill the blank with "paper"?

Oh, Hoxford was a pleasant plice To many a poet dear, And Saccharissa had the grice In Hoxford to appear. But Waller, if to Cytherea He prayed at any time, Did not implore "her friendly ear," And think he had a rhyme.

Now, if you ask to what are due The horrors which I mention, I think we owe them to the U- Niversity extension. From Hoxton and from Poplar come The 'Arriets and 'Arries, And so the Oxford Muse is dumb, Or, when she sings, miscarries.

WHY wilt thou woo, ah, strange Eurydice, A languid laurell'd Orpheus in the shades, For here is company of shadowy maids, Hero, and Helen and Psamatho?:

And life is like the blossom on the tree, And never tumult of the world invades, The low light wanes and waxes, flowers and fades, And sleep is sweet, and dreams suffice for me;

"Go back, and seek the sunlight," as of old, The wise ghost-mother of Odysseus said, Here am I half content, and scarce a-cold, But one light fits the living, one the dead; Good-bye, be glad, forget! thou canst not hold In thy kind arms, alas! this powerless head.

"The better half"--how good the sound! Of Scott's or Ainsworth's "venison pasty," In cups of old Canary drowned, . The beefsteak pudding made by Ruth To cheer Tom Pinch in his affliction, Ah me, in all the world of truth, There's nothing like the food of fiction!

The cakes and ham and buttered toast That graced the board of Gabriel Varden, In Bracebridge Hall the Christmas roast, Fruits from the Goblin Market Garden. And if you'd eat of luscious sweets And yet escape from gout's infliction, Just read "St. Agnes' Eve" by Keats-- There's nothing like the food of fiction.

What cups of tea were ever brewed Like Sairey Gamp's--the dear old sinner? What savoury mess was ever stewed Like that for Short's and Codlin's dinner? What was the flavour of that "poy"-- To use the Fotheringay's own diction-- Pendennis ate, the love-sick boy? There's nothing like the food of fiction.

Prince, you are young--but you will find After life's years of fret and friction, That hunger wanes--but never mind! There's nothing like the food of fiction.

HAD cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne'er a thorn, No man would be a funker Of whin, or burn, or bunker. There were no need for mashies, The turf would ne'er be torn, Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne'er a thorn.

Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne'er a thorn, The big trout would not ever Escape into the river. No gut the salmon smashes Would leave us all forlorn, Had cigarettes no ashes, And roses ne'er a thorn.

But 'tis an unideal, Sad world in which we're born, And things will "go contrairy" With Martin and with Mary: And every day the real Comes bleakly in with morn, And cigarettes have ashes, And every rose a thorn.

T. 99 would gladly hear From one whose years are few, A maid whose doctrines are severe, Of Presbyterian blue, Also--with view to the above-- Her photo he would see, And trusts that she may live and love His Protestant to be! But ere the sacred rites are done He'd ask, if she a Remington Type-writer works--at home?

IN MEMORY OF THOMAS TOD STODDART.

His boyhood found the waters clean, His age deplored them, foul with dye; But purple hills, and copses green, And these old towers he wandered by, Still to the simple strains reply Of his pure unrepining reed, Who lies where he was fain to lie, Like Scott, within the sound of Tweed.

THE Angler hath a jolly life Who by the rail runs down, And leaves his business and his wife, And all the din of town. The wind down stream is blowing straight, And nowhere cast can he: Then lo, he doth but sit and wait In kindly company.

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