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Read Ebook: Poetical Ingenuities and Eccentricities by Dobson William T Editor
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Ebook has 1101 lines and 61585 words, and 23 pages
"I marvelled why a simple child, That lightly draws its breath, Should utter groans so very wild, And look as pale as death.
Adopting a parental tone, I asked her why she cried; The damsel answered with a groan, 'I've got a pain inside.
I thought it would have sent me mad, Last night about eleven.' Said I, 'What is it makes you bad? How many apples have you had?' She answered, 'Only seven!'
'If that's the case,' I stammered out, 'Of course you've had eleven.' The maiden answered with a pout, 'I ain't had more nor seven!'
I wondered hugely what she meant, And said, 'I'm bad at riddles, But I know where little girls are sent For telling tarradiddles.
Now if you don't reform,' said I, 'You'll never go to heaven!' But all in vain; each time I try, The little idiot makes reply, 'I ain't had more nor seven!'
POSTSCRIPT.
To borrow Wordsworth's name was wrong, Or slightly misapplied; And so I'd better call my song, 'Lines from Ache-inside.'"
Mr. Swinburne's alliterative style lays him particularly open to the skilful parodist, and he has been well imitated by Mr. Mortimer Collins, who, perhaps, is as well known as novelist as poet. The following example is entitled
"IF."
"If life were never bitter, And love were always sweet, Then who would care to borrow A moral from to-morrow? If Thames would always glitter, And joy would ne'er retreat, If life were never bitter, And love were always sweet.
If wit were always radiant, And wine were always iced, And bores were kicked out straightway Through a convenient gateway: Then down the year's long gradient 'Twere sad to be enticed, If wit were always radiant; And wine were always iced."
The next instance, by the same author, is another good imitation of Mr. Swinburne's style. It is a recipe for
SALAD.
"Oh, cool in the summer is salad, And warm in the winter is love; And a poet shall sing you a ballad Delicious thereon and thereof. A singer am I, if no sinner, My muse has a marvellous wing, And I willingly worship at dinner The sirens of spring.
Take endive--like love it is bitter, Take beet--for like love it is red; Crisp leaf of the lettuce shall glitter And cress from the rivulet's bed; Anchovies, foam-born, like the lady Whose beauty has maddened this bard; And olives, from groves that are shady, And eggs--boil 'em hard."
The "Shootover Papers," by members of the Oxford University, contains this parody, written upon the "Procuratores," a kind of university police:
"Oh, vestment of velvet and virtue, Oh, venomous victors of vice, Who hurt men who never hurt you, Oh, calm, cold, crueller than ice. Why wilfully wage you this war, is All pity purged out of your breast? Oh, purse-prigging procuratores, Oh, pitiless pest!
We had smote and made redder than roses, With juice not of fruit nor of bud, The truculent townspeople's noses, And bathed brutal butchers in blood; And we all aglow in our glories, Heard you not in the deafening din; And ye came, oh ye procuratores, And ran us all in!"
In the same book a certain school of poets has been hit at in the following lines:
"Mingled, aye, with fragrant yearnings, Throbbing in the mellow glow, Glint the silvery spirit burnings, Pearly blandishments of woe.
Ay! for ever and for ever, While the love-lorn censers sweep; While the jasper winds dissever, Amber-like, the crystal deep;
Shall the soul's delicious slumber, Sea-green vengeance of a kiss, Reach despairing crags to number Blue infinities of bliss."
The "Diversions of the Echo Club," by Bayard Taylor, contains many parodies, principally upon American poets, and gives this admirable rendering of Edgar A. Poe's style:
THE PROMISSORY NOTE.
"In the lonesome latter years, To the dropping of my tears Danced the mad and mystic spheres In a rounded, reeling rune, 'Neath the moon, To the dripping and the dropping of my tears.
'Twas the random runes I wrote At the bottom of the note , In the middle of the night, In the mellow, moonless night, When the stars were out of sight, When my pulses like a knell, Danced with dim and dying fays O'er the ruins of my days, O'er the dimeless, timeless days, When the fifty, drawn at thirty, Seeming thrifty, yet the dirty Lucre of the market, was the most that I could raise!
Bret Harte also has given a good imitation of Poe's style in "The Willows," from which there follows an extract:
"But Mary, uplifting her finger, Said, 'Sadly this bar I mistrust,-- I fear that this bar does not trust. Oh, hasten--oh, let us not linger-- Oh, fly--let us fly--ere we must!' In terror she cried, letting sink her Parasol till it trailed in the dust,-- In agony sobbed, letting sink her Parasol till it trailed in the dust,-- Till it sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
Mr. Calverley is perhaps one of the best of the later parodists, and he hits off Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, Coventry Patmore, and others most inimitably. We give a couple of verses from one, a parody of his upon a well-known lyric of Tennyson's, and few we think after perusing it would be able to read "The Brook" without its murmur being associated with the wandering tinker:
"I loiter down by thorp and town; For any job I'm willing; Take here and there a dusty brown And here and there a shilling.
Thus on he prattled, like a babbling brook, Then I; 'The sun has slept behind the hill, And my Aunt Vivian dines at half-past six.' So in all love we parted: I to the Hall, They to the village. It was noised next noon That chickens had been missed at Syllabub Farm."
Mr. Tennyson's "Home they brought her warrior dead," has likewise been differently travestied by various writers. One of these by Mr. Sawyer is given here:
THE RECOGNITION.
"Home they brought her sailor son, Grown a man across the sea, Tall and broad and black of beard, And hoarse of voice as man may be.
Hand to shake and mouth to kiss, Both he offered ere he spoke; But she said, 'What man is this Comes to play a sorry joke?'
Then they praised him--call'd him 'smart,' 'Tightest lad that ever stept;' But her son she did not know, And she neither smiled nor wept.
Rose, a nurse of ninety years, Set a pigeon-pie in sight; She saw him eat--''Tis he! 'tis he!'-- She knew him--by his appetite!"
"The May-Queen" has also suffered in some verses called "The Biter Bit," of which these are the last four lines:
"You may lay me in my bed, mother--my head is throbbing sore; And, mother, prithee let the sheets be duly aired before; And if you'd do a kindness to your poor desponding child, Draw me a pot of beer, mother--and, mother, draw it mild!"
Mr. Calverley has imitated well also the old ballad style, as in this one, of which we give the opening verses:
"It was a railway passenger, And he leapt out jauntilie. 'Now up and bear, thou proud port?r, My two chattels to me.
'And fetch me eke a cabman bold, That I may be his fare, his fare: And he shall have a good shilling, If by two of the clock he do me bring To the terminus, Euston Square.'
'Now,--so to thee the Saints alway, Good gentlemen, give luck,-- As never a cab may I find this day, For the cabmen wights have struck:
And now, I wis, at the Red Post Inn, Or else at the Dog and Duck, Or at Unicorn Blue, or at Green Griffin, The nut-brown ale and the fine old gin Right pleasantlie they do suck.'"...
The following imitation of the old ballad form is by Mr. Lewis Carroll, who has written many capital versions of different poems:
YE CARPETTE KNYGHTE.
"I have a horse--a ryghte good horse-- Ne doe I envie those Who scoure ye plaine in headie course, Tyll soddaine on theyre nose They lyghte wyth unexpected force-- It ys--a horse of clothes.
I have a saddel--'Say'st thou soe? Wyth styrruppes, knyghte, to boote?' I sayde not that--I answere 'Noe'-- Yt lacketh such, I woot-- Yt ys a mutton-saddel, loe! Parte of ye fleecie brute.
I have a bytte--a right good bytte-- As schall be seen in time. Ye jawe of horse yt wyll not fytte-- Yts use ys more sublyme. Fayre Syr, how deemest thou of yt? Yt ys--thys bytte of rhyme."
In "Alice in Wonderland," by the same gentleman, there is this new version of an old nursery ditty:
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