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SALVAGE 
 
By the same Author 
 
 HORACE AT CAMBRIDGE 
 TILLERS OF THE SAND 
 THE BATTLE OF THE BAYS 
 IN CAP AND BELLS 
 BORROWED PLUMES 
 A HARVEST OF CHAFF 
 
SALVAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 OWEN SEAMAN 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD 
 
 1908 
 
BRADBURY, AGNEVV, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, 
 
 LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. 
 
?2J 
 
 5*-/£s 
 
 With two exceptions, these sets of verse have 
 already appeared in Punch, to whose Proprietors 
 I offer my best thanks for their courtesy in 
 allowing me to republish my work. 
 
 O. S. 
 
 \ ' 4 
 
 CV. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WOMEN I HAVE NEVER MARRIED — 
 
 I. PRISCILLA I 
 
 II. DORA 3 
 
 III. EMMELINE 5 
 
 IV. JOAN 8 
 
 V. GRACE 10 
 
 THE OLD SONGS 13 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT BRIGAND-CHIEF . l6 
 TO A FRIEND, ABOUT TO MARRY BEER . . . 20 
 
 A CHANNEL RECORD 22 
 
 THE POET TO HIS SUFFRAGETTE . . . . 27 
 
 THE SLUMP IN POETS 29 
 
 THE BIRTHRIGHT OF THE FREE . . . . 32 
 
 ORAL QUESTIONS AND WRITTEN ANSWERS . . 35 
 
 REFLECTIONS ON THE TURF 43 
 
 THE MAN THAT MIGHT 45 
 
 TO VENUS, SHOT IN HER TRACKS . . . . 47 
 
 “ SWEET USES OF OBESITY ” . . *49 
 
 CEDANT ARMA TOG^ ? 52 
 
 TO CHRISTINE 55 
 
 HUMOURS OF AN ENGLISH SUMMER . . . 58 
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF MOTLEY 6l 
 
 OF TOP-DRESSING 63 
 
 A POLICE TRAP 65 
 
 TO A FORTUNATE BABE 68 
 
 ARMS AND THE WOMAN — 
 
 I. SEEING RED 70 
 
 II. THE LADIES’ CAVALRY CLUB . . . 72 
 
Contents 
 
 viii 
 
 A SMART SET-BACK 
 
 A NEW PROFESSION ; OR, WHAT TO DO WITH 
 
 OUR SONS ? 
 
 ENCORE LE MONDE OU L’ON s’AFFICHE . 
 
 THE WEARING OF THE WHISKER . . . . 
 
 OF TAME LIONS 
 
 THE DECLINE OF CHIVALRY 
 
 A FAMOUS VICTORY 
 
 TO A LOST BACHELOR 
 
 ALL FOOLS’ EVE 
 
 TO ENGLAND IN 1908 
 
 THE TURNING OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS WORM . 
 
 IN PRAISE OF FOG 
 
 NIGHT THOUGHTS OF AN ALTRUIST . 
 
 THE CONSOLATIONS OF AGE 
 
 “ HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD ” . 
 
 THE SOURCE OF ENGLAND’S GREATNESS . . 
 
 THE SECRET OF SANITY 
 
 THE HIGHER KIND OF POET 
 
 PEERS V. PEOPLE 
 
 PILOTS THAT WANT DROPPING . . . . 
 
 TO A TOAST-MASTER 
 
 THOUGHTS ON A “ SEASONABLE ” CHRISTMAS . 
 
 ENGLAND EXPECTS ? 
 
 THE NATION’S SONGS 
 
 CHILDE BIRRELL TO THE DARK TOWER CAME . 
 
 A SECRET COMMISSION 
 
 THE PEOPLE’S SPORT 
 
 GAMES AND THE MAN 
 
 A TONIC FOR THE DUMPS 
 
 AN END OF DANCING 
 
 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS 
 
 THOMAS JOHN BARNARDO . . . . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 75 
 
 77 
 
 80 
 
 82 
 
 «5 
 
 87 
 
 89 
 
 92 
 
 94 
 
 96 
 
 99 
 
 102 
 
 104 
 
 106 
 
 108 
 
 112 
 
 ii5 
 
 118 
 
 121 
 
 123 
 
 I2 5 
 
 127 
 
 129 
 
 132 
 
 135 
 
 137 
 
 i39 
 
 142 
 
 i45 
 
 i47 
 
 149 
 
 150 
 
SALVAGE 
 
 WOMEN I HAVE NEVER MARRIED 
 
 [N.B. — The following series may be classified under the 
 head of Works of Imagination.] 
 
 I. — Priscilla 
 
 Priscilla ! Had the fates designed 
 To weave our mortal webs in one ; 
 
 Had Love, notoriously blind, 
 
 Not let his bandage come undone ; 
 
 I tremble even now to think 
 
 How my career, with yours united, 
 
 Might have sustained a horrid kink 
 And been irrevocably blighted. 
 
 In you my callow heart embraced 
 What I regarded as a sign 
 Of dawning literary taste 
 
 Fit to respond, almost, to mine; 
 
 You had the right artistic bump, 
 
 The tact (I said), the intuition 
 That apprehend a poet’s hump 
 During the pangs of composition. 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 Salvage 
 
 You may have had. I don’t suggest 
 
 That youthful judgment read you wrong ; 
 You would, no doubt, have done your best 
 To help me through my throes of song ; 
 Rather my scorn is levelled at 
 The hollow hopes a lover nurses 
 Who dreams that such a type as that 
 Would tend to lubricate his verses. 
 
 I’m wiser now : I’ve come to know 
 The kind that holds your writing hand 
 And smooths your brow and murmurs low : 
 
 “ Poor darling ! How I understand ! ” 
 They don't, of course ! They cannot see 
 (Their minds are built with this hiatus) 
 How one revolts from sympathy 
 
 When wrestling with a rhyme-afflatus. 
 
 Well, well, Priscilla, I am weaned 
 
 From what was once a poignant pain ; 
 
 And bless his eyes who intervened — 
 
 The broker-man from Mincing Lane ; 
 
 He won your hand, good honest soul, 
 
 And if it still persists in stroking 
 His flabby paw, or polished poll, 
 
 I doubt if that disturbs his broking. 
 
 Why have these thoughts just now occurred ? 
 
 It is July the Fourth, my dear, 
 
 The day on which he spoke the word 
 Into your pink and willing ear ; 
 
Women I have never Married 
 
 3 
 
 And there is not, I dare to say, 
 
 A free-born Yank across the tide who 
 Keeps up his “ Independence Day ” 
 With purer, holier joy than I do. 
 
 II. — Dora 
 
 My Dora, how the days have gone 
 Since I, in Cupid’s constant thrall, 
 
 Considered every goose a swan, 
 
 And you the swanliest of them all ! 
 
 The thing you did was always right ; 
 About your simplest act or motion 
 
 Lingered the iridescent light 
 
 That never was on land or ocean. 
 
 Once, it is true, I thought I traced 
 A hint of something less refined ; 
 
 It turned upon a point of taste : — 
 
 I asked your hand and you declined ; 
 
 Still “Youth,” I urged, “ is seldom wise, 
 It needs to undergo correction ; 
 
 Some day she’ll come to recognise 
 The loss entailed by this rejection.” 
 
 But now I thank the kindly Fate 
 
 Which in the mask of Wounded Love 
 
 Left me, just then, disconsolate 
 Owing to treatment as above ; 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 Salvage 
 
 For you have lost your maiden dower ; 
 
 You are a Woman in the Fashion, 
 
 And Bridge, from fevered hour to hour, 
 
 Is now your one and wasting passion. 
 
 We meet at dinner. You are pale ; 
 
 An odour on the ambient air 
 Of club tobacco, pungent, stale, 
 
 Steals from your loosely ordered hair ; 
 
 I note the vacant eyes that show 
 Their circling tell-tale lines of sable, 
 The restless hands that move as though 
 They sought the little green-cloth table. 
 
 My gayest sallies seem to irk 
 
 Your absent mind. You eat as one 
 Who gathers strength for serious work 
 That waits her when the meal is done ; 
 At last your hostess leads the way, 
 Bidding curtail our port and prattle, 
 And lo ! you prick your ears and neigh 
 Like a war-mare that scents the battle. 
 
 We follow where the cards are spread ; 
 
 I mark your animated mien, 
 
 Your face a little flushed with red, 
 
 Your eyes perhaps a thought too keen. 
 Alert to seize the subtlest clues, 
 
 Bold in assault, a stout defender — 
 
 If you could only bear to lose 
 You might be almost any gender ! 
 
Women I have never Married 
 
 5 
 
 Yet, as I watch you play the game 
 That “ gives to life its only zest ” 
 
 (Life, as you understand the same), 
 
 Indeed you hardly look your best ; 
 
 Missing the cool detached repose 
 
 That ought to stamp your cast of features, 
 You miss the charm that Woman throws 
 Over us men and lower creatures. 
 
 There is a thought I will adapt 
 
 From someone else’s wisdom’s wealth 
 (A polished orator, and apt 
 
 To toast aloud the Ladies’ health), 
 
 In proof how low your lapse must be 
 From what a start to what a sequel: 
 
 You once were worth ten score of me, 
 
 And now — I count you scarce my equal . 
 
 III. — Emmeline 
 She was “ a phantom of delight,” 
 
 One of those rare elusive things 
 Detained this side the Ewigkeit 
 
 Through temporary want of wings ; 
 Our world was not her natural place, 
 Rather she seemed a priceless relic 
 Of Faerieland’s enchanted grace, 
 
 She was so birdlike, so angelic. 
 
6 
 
 Salvage 
 
 I often wondered what she ate ; 
 
 She looked as though she lived on air, 
 Or, if she fed from off a plate, 
 
 Would only touch ambrosial fare ; 
 
 No man that dealt in butcher’s meat 
 Had ever been allowed to victual 
 With stuff we common mortals eat 
 A form so exquisitely brittle. 
 
 Such were my views when first I fell, 
 
 In salad days still fairly green, 
 
 Beneath the spiritual spell 
 Of my unearthly Emmeline ; 
 
 She had on me a marked effect : 
 
 Each moment spent in gazing at her 
 Tended to make me more select, 
 
 And purge my soul of grosser matter. 
 
 And yet a fear assailed my mind 
 
 When I reviewed my purposed vows — 
 Whether a being so refined 
 
 Would make a good domestic spouse ; 
 Would she, as fits a faithful wife 
 
 (The thought already left me thinner), 
 Count it her chief concern in life 
 To see that I enjoyed my dinner ? 
 
 She whom (I guessed) a currant bun 
 Sufficed for hunger’s faint appeals — 
 Would she respect, when we were one, 
 My prejudice for decent meals ? 
 
Women I have never Married 
 
 7 
 
 Anxious for some assuring sign 
 To clinch my hesitating passion, 
 
 I asked my angel out to dine 
 
 At London’s first resort of Fashion. 
 
 She came. She passed a final word 
 Upon the bisque , the Mornay sole, 
 
 The poulet (said she thought the bird 
 Shewed at its best en casserole ) ; 
 
 She found the pavfait “ quite first-rate,” 
 Summed up the chef as “ rather handy,” 
 Knew the Lafitte for ’88, 
 
 And twice encored a fine old brandy. 
 
 I own I felt an inward pain, 
 
 When she put off her seraph airs, 
 
 To find I had to entertain 
 An earthly angel unawares ; 
 
 I merely asked her there to test 
 Her aptness for a wifely calling, 
 
 And never dreamed that she possessed 
 A special knowledge so appalling ! 
 
 Frankly, she went a shade too far. 
 
 It was a shock — I feel it still — 
 
 To learn that what I deemed a star 
 Was just an ember off the grill ! 
 
 Well, twenty years or so have gone, 
 
 And now I meet her (ah, the pity !), 
 
 A puffy matron serving on 
 
 The “New Amphitryon Club” Committee. 
 
8 
 
 Salvage 
 
 IV. — Joan 
 
 How quickly these impressions wane ! 
 
 I think — but would not like to swear — 
 
 It must have been the mise-en-scene 
 That drew me first to Joan Adair ; 
 
 For I have sampled many a view 
 Before and since, but never seen a 
 More likely spot for Love’s debut — 
 
 Take it all round — than Taormina. 
 
 Sheer crags above, and, sheer below, 
 
 The shifting light on narrow seas ; 
 Southward the crater, crowned with snow, 
 That swallowed poor Empedocles ; 
 
 Ruins of Roman play-house walls 
 
 (Hellenic in their prime construction) ; — 
 ’Twas there, in two adjacent stalls, 
 
 That we dispensed with introduction. 
 
 “ O Isle of Greater Greece ! ” I thought ; 
 
 “ O famous Syracusan shore ! ” 
 
 For memory moved me, strangely fraught 
 With little tags of classic lore ; 
 
 So that her air, fresh- blown and blonde 
 (My fancy being somewhat flighty), 
 Appeared to me to correspond 
 Roughly to that of Aphrodite. 
 
Women I have never Married 
 
 9 
 
 And yet a goddess over-ripe 
 
 In the technique of Love his trade 
 Scarce seemed a proper prototype 
 For so demure a British maid ; 
 
 Better that I should take the style 
 Of Ferdinand (wrecked off Girgenti ?) 
 Who found Miranda of the Isle, 
 
 A trusting girl of eight-and-twenty. 
 
 That lovely heroine’s lot was cast 
 
 Remote from men ; and, much the same, 
 Dear Joan, it seemed, had had no past, 
 
 But barely lived before I came. 
 
 ’Twas well ! The warrior sort might choose 
 Rivals to rout in open action, 
 
 But I with my civilian views 
 
 Preferred to be the sole attraction. 
 
 What might have happed I won’t enquire ; 
 
 For Fate that guards my guileless head 
 Summoned me home by instant wire 
 Before the crucial word was said ; 
 
 And when, in London’s giddier scenes, 
 
 Once more we met I nearly fainted 
 To find her not by any means 
 The lonely chicken I had painted. 
 
 I that was once so nice and near 
 Felt like a stranger far apart, 
 
 Wholly unread in that career 
 
 Which others seemed to know by heart ; 
 
IO 
 
 Salvage 
 
 These were “ her men ; ” I heard her call 
 
 Their Christian names — Tom, Dick and Harry, 
 
 Yet not a man among them all 
 
 Had thought her good enough to marry ! 
 
 No shadow, so I heard, had crept 
 Across the lady’s fair repute 
 
 Explaining what it was that kept 
 The voice of Matrimony mute ; 
 
 Her ’scutcheon bore no kind of blot ; 
 
 She had admirers brave and many ; 
 
 But as to marriage — they were not, 
 
 In vulgar parlance, “ taking any.” 
 
 Slowly and with reluctant pain 
 
 This doubt arose to give me pause : 
 
 Do girls of twenty -eight remain 
 Spinsters without a cogent cause ? 
 
 Why should I risk to bark my shin 
 Against the steps of Hymen’s altar ? 
 
 Why, like a fool, rush madly in 
 
 Where wiser men preferred to falter ? 
 
 V. — Grace 
 
 People who understand the gist 
 
 Of Browning’s views on married life 
 Assert that, in his special list 
 Of requisites for man and wife, 
 
 He notes that each should have a different bent 
 And be the other party’s complement. 
 
Women I have never Married 
 
 ii 
 
 True that, in practice, Mrs. B. 
 
 (I will not say which had it worse) 
 
 Shared in a very marked degree 
 Her Robert’s fatal gift of verse ; 
 
 But still his published theory of Love 
 Lays down the principle I cite above. 
 
 Taking this golden rule for guide, 
 
 I, of the somewhat flippant vein, 
 
 Wanted a weighty sort of bride 
 To ballast my so buoyant brain ; 
 
 I felt that she, the woman I should wed, 
 
 Must be supremely serious in the head. 
 
 And such was Grace. The heart divines 
 These natures by a second sight ; 
 
 And certain rather pointed lines, 
 
 Writ in her album, proved me right : 
 
 “ Be good , sweet maid , and let who can be clever ” — 
 And this, I saw, was her precise endeavour. 
 
 And yet our loves did not succeed ; 
 
 For though her weight (I here refer 
 To moral worth) supplied my need, 
 
 I was a touch too light for her ; 
 
 Against the rules that regulate the love-tale 
 Our complementary tastes refused to dovetail. 
 
 She had a trick I could not bear : 
 
 She tried (I might have known she would) 
 
12 
 
 Salvage 
 
 To trace, beneath my ribald air, 
 
 “ Potentialities for good ” ; 
 
 This was to be her future wifely vole, 
 
 Namely, to extricate my lurking soul. 
 
 “ The world may think you what it will, 
 
 But Love/’ she said, “ has keener eyes, 
 And probes with nice, unerring skill 
 Beyond the formal crust, or guise ; 
 
 Under your thinnish coat of comic art 
 Crouches a grave, austere and noble heart ! ” 
 
 She meant it well. She could not see — 
 
 Alas ! how seldom women can ! — 
 
 That Art, a sacred thing to me, 
 
 Must needs reflect the inner Man ; 
 
 That Humour’s motley-wear could never hide 
 What she attributed to my inside. 
 
 Indeed, to take the converse case, 
 
 If I had been a serious bard, 
 
 Would she, I ask, have had the face 
 To hint that Love’s profound regard 
 Could penetrate the solemn outer sheath 
 And find the genuine mountebank beneath ? 
 
 Enough. She had to speak the word 
 That loosed my irritating bands ; 
 
 And though my gallant tongue demurred, 
 
 And though I raised protesting hands, 
 
 A lofty resignation lit my face 
 
 The moment she had dealt her coup de Grace. 
 
( 13 ) 
 
 THE OLD SONGS 
 
 A Parental Rebuke 
 
 And so you find them somewhat thin, 
 The songs that made your sire to grin 
 When mid-Victorian modes were in ? 
 
 You snort at that historic wit 
 Which once provoked in stall and pit 
 The frequent apoplectic fit ? 
 
 The hoar and hallowed tag that got 
 Home on the intercostal spot 
 Now seems the most amazing rot ? 
 
 Yet were it rash, my boy, for you 
 To entertain the impious view 
 (Held, as I hear, by one or two), 
 
 That, Humour having changed its style 
 From what inspired your parent’s smile, 
 His taste was relatively vile. 
 
 ’Tis true that Time has dulled the fame 
 (Almost, I fear, beyond reclaim) 
 
 Of Champagne Charlie is my name ; 
 
H 
 
 Salvage 
 
 ’Tis true that rolling years obscure 
 The subtle charm, the fine allure, 
 
 That underlay The Perfect Cure ;* 
 
 But, en revanche , the vogue of rhymes 
 Which you have heard a hundred times 
 Emitted by your favourite mimes — 
 
 The last comedian’s lyric verse 
 On which you waste your nightly purse — 
 Affect me like a funeral hearse ; 
 
 Or would, at least, affect me so 
 If I could be induced to go 
 To this depressing kind of Show. 
 
 Therefore, my son, if you are wise, 
 
 You will observe without surprise 
 The wayward shifts of Humour’s guise ; 
 
 Nor deem another’s taste is cheap 
 If where you laugh he wants to weep, 
 
 Or giggles while you go to sleep. 
 
 You, too, in turn, may have a son, 
 
 And marvel how he finds his fun 
 In wheezes where you notice none. 
 
 * The following extract illustrates the tenor of what 
 has been described as “ a colossal success of another 
 generation” : — 
 
 “With my hi gee-wo, 
 
 There I do go, 
 
 For I’m the perfect cure.” 
 
The Old Songs 
 
 i5 
 
 For here, on this terrestrial ball, 
 Nations and markets rise and fall, 
 
 But Humour wobbles most of all. 
 
 No man may say, with hand on breast, 
 Challenging Time to be its test, 
 
 “ Lo ! I have wrought a Cosmic Jest.” 
 
 And he alone of other folk 
 Can still be stable as an oak, 
 
 Who never made, or saw, a joke. 
 
( i6 ) 
 
 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT 
 BRIGAND-CHIEF 
 
 It was an ancient brigand-chief, 
 
 And a horny eye had he, 
 
 And the lethal weapons that lined his belt 
 Would have stocked an armoury. 
 
 Around the camp-fire's ruddy glow 
 His followers sniffed the breeze ; 
 
 Half-cock (or more) each stalwart bore 
 His blunderbuss at ease. 
 
 Then up and spake that ancient sport : 
 
 “ I have* a tale to tell — ” ; 
 
 The brigands sighed and yawned full wide, 
 They knew the wheeze so well. 
 
 “ It was September’s opening day, 
 
 To British sportsmen dear — ” ; 
 
 That was the way the tale began 
 Steadily once a year ; 
 
 By his own request he told that geste, 
 
 And they could not choose but hear. 
 
 “ ’Tis fifty years ago to-day 
 Sithence this thing occurred ; 
 
 We sallied out a merry rout 
 To slay the partridge bird. 
 
Rime of the Ancient Brigand-Chief 17 
 
 “ Brand-new my suit of Tartan check, 
 Wrought of the Scots home-spun ; 
 
 In brand-new boots I tramped the roots 
 Beneath a brand-new gun. 
 
 “ My eye was bright, my step was light, 
 
 My heart was hot within, 
 
 And all for a maid whose peerless love 
 I rather hoped to win. 
 
 “ She was a sporting damosel, 
 
 Well knowing what was what, 
 
 And had vowed she never would yield her hand 
 (So I was given to understand) 
 
 Save to a first-class shot. 
 
 “ Therefore with many a prayer that I 
 That day might earn renown, 
 
 I blazed to right, I blazed to left, 
 
 I blazed into the brown ; 
 
 I blazed the livelong morning through, 
 
 From 10.15 to nearly 2.0, 
 
 But never a bird came down. 
 
 “ We had reached the final turnip-patch, 
 
 Nor yet had I tasted gore, 
 
 When lo ! a single bird arose 
 Immediately beneath my nose, 
 
 Of somewhat larger size than those 
 I had observed before. 
 
 “It was my chance ere luncheon brought 
 The ladies in its train ; 
 
 c 
 
i8 
 
 Salvage 
 
 I gave the bird a yard or so, 
 
 Then, letting both my barrels go, 
 
 I blew the thing in twain. 
 
 “ ‘ Ha ! ha ! ’ I cried ; but the guns replied 
 All down the line with ‘ Shame ! ’ ; 
 
 It seems that I had felled to earth 
 A pheasant, young and tame ; 
 
 ’Twas wrong, said they, such birds to slay 
 Or ever October came. 
 
 “ At lunch they laughed ; I even heard 
 My winsome lady howl ; 
 
 For on my platter they had spread 
 
 The sections, obviously dead, 
 
 Of that infernal fowl. 
 
 “ Laughter and gibe from rude coarse men 
 Ere now have made me curse ; 
 
 But to be mocked of one you love, 
 
 O that is far, far worse. 
 
 “ My blood was up ; I filled a cup 
 Full of the gold Rhine wine ; 
 
 Drank ‘ Death to bird and man and beast ! ’ 
 
 And straightway left that grisly feast 
 With never a farewell sign. 
 
 “ Thenceforth I swore all living things 
 Should lie beneath my ban ; 
 
 I swore to seek some larger clime 
 
 Where I could kill, with no close time 
 For bird or beast or man. 
 
Rime of the Ancient Brigand-Chief 19 
 
 “ Comrades ! In these Circassian parts 
 Where life runs fairly cheap, 
 
 With Tartar and Turk and Jew for game 
 Have I not purged my ancient shame ? 
 
 Say ! ” But the brigands said no word 
 By way of comment upon the bird — 
 
 Being, in fact, asleep. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 Salvage 
 
 TO A FRIEND, ABOUT TO MARRY 
 BEER 
 
 Herbert, as you describe the gifted creature 
 That weaves about your heart her golden spell, 
 I gather she is Philistine of feature 
 
 But in her converse strangely spirituelle ; 
 
 Her figure may be sketchy, but in mental 
 And moral graces she’s a flawless pearl, 
 
 And to the arts of forty adds a rental 
 Fit for a bloated earl. 
 
 My boy, I do not here propose to pamper 
 Your very pardonable self-esteem, 
 
 Nor, on the other hand, to throw a damper 
 Over the dawn of Youth’s romantic dream ; 
 
 I pass no comment on the situation 
 Save to extract from memory’s mouldy stores 
 A case that fell within my observation 
 Analogous to yours. 
 
 He, too, that other pauper, nursed a passion 
 For one whose shekels matched the shower of 
 Jove ; 
 
 He thought to live a life of luxe and fashion 
 Wed to the purple — or, at least, the mauve. 
 What happened ? Halfway through the moon 
 of honey 
 
 He had become the queen-bee’s humble drone, 
 And failed to touch sufficient ready- money 
 To call his soul his own. 
 
To a Friend, about to Marry Beer 21 
 
 In clear and bell-like notes that wouldn’t falter, 
 Not though the parson twitched a dubious 
 brow, 
 
 He had informed his heiress at the altar : 
 “With all my worldly goods I thee 
 
 ENDOW.” 
 
 Whereas ’twas she who bought his youth and 
 beauty, 
 
 Paid for ’em like a man — or said she’d pay, 
 And shifted on to him the wifely duty 
 To “honour and obey.” 
 
 My boy, I mention this by way of warning, 
 
 Not that you have an eye for filthy pelf ; 
 
 You love the lady for her mind’s adorning, 
 
 I’m sure you love her solely for herself; 
 
 Yet, Herbert, since the human heart is fickle 
 And verbal promises are often trash, 
 
 See that you have a settlement , and stichle 
 For something round in cash . 
 
( 22 ) 
 
 A CHANNEL RECORD 
 
 [Mr. Swinburne’s poem, “A Channel Passage,” begins 
 in a trochaic-dactylic-catalectic metre, of no fewer than 
 eight beats, and changes with the rising of the storm to 
 an anapaestic-iambic-acatalectic metre of seven beats. 
 The author of the following lines has humbly ventured to go 
 one beat better throughout. The apparent licence which 
 permits him to scan “ rapturous,” “satiate,” “ gradual,” 
 and “ livelier,” as dissyllables is strictly derived from the 
 original. He dedicates these verses in passionate admira- 
 tion to the Anglo-French marvel, Mr. Thomas William 
 Burgess, of Paris, and late of Rotherham, Yorks.] 
 
 Forth from Dover at 7 a.m., at the hour when 
 the milk comes round for the Castle Mess, 
 Fared the tug that bore on her prancing poop 
 the joy and pride of the halfpenny Press ; 
 Gnat was the name of her, late returned from 
 the nightlong lustre of waves at her luminous 
 prow, 
 
 Lit for a beacon and buffet to him, the hero of 
 Teuton extraction that failed, and now, 
 Fraughted with Burgess for freight, or freighted 
 with Burgess for fraught, whichever arrange- 
 ment you like, 
 
 Westward she lurched to the region of Lyddon 
 Sprout and landed the rapturous and radiant 
 Tyke. 
 
 Then like a lioness loosed from the toils on the 
 flat-foot track of a timorous coolie of Ind, 
 
A Channel Record 
 
 23 
 
 Bare as a babe he strided out hip-deep to the 
 lust of battle with wave and wind ; 
 
 Plunged his billow-proof mask in the main, and 
 adopting a low side-stroke of exceptional 
 power 
 
 Thridded the seas at the rate of two-and-a-half 
 to three full nautical knots per hour. 
 
 Loud from the tug as he sped like a friendly 
 torpedo aimed at the uttermost fringes of 
 France 
 
 Cheers outbroke and the bruit of backers that 
 asked for the odds, fifteen to eight, on his 
 chance. 
 
 Slewed by slithering tides, that played with his 
 strength as the blizzard plays with a young 
 boy’s kite, 
 
 Now on the Foreland trail and now in the other 
 direction, the way to the Isle of Wight, 
 
 Ever he struck for the Calais coast with the 
 brine in his breath and the red hope hot at 
 his heart, 
 
 Save when he sipped boiled Bovril or crushed 
 the juice of the wine-blue grape or a custard 
 tart ; 
 
 Till the homeward Mail with a starboard list 
 where the clamour of plaudits clove the 
 air 
 
 Spake from the midmost deeps of her course to 
 say that the gallant swimmer was half-way 
 there. 
 
24 
 
 Salvage 
 
 Whence came change ? Were the powers that 
 govern the moon that governs the tides that 
 flow and ebb 
 
 Jealous that one more name should be added 
 to those of Byron, Leander, and Captain 
 Webb? 
 
 Can they have kicked at the last link forged 
 in a chain designed to master a virgin 
 pride, 
 
 Knitting adjacent lands in love, as a neighbourly 
 bridegroom is knit to his next-door bride ? 
 
 What the original reason I know not ; but this 
 at least that a mortal may know, I know, 
 
 How that the winds that had softly blown in his 
 eyes as the breath, kiss-laden, of love may 
 blow 
 
 Rose to the passion and wrath and rapture of 
 half a gale or possibly even worse, 
 
 Thus necessitating a delicate change in the lilt 
 of my semi-trochaic verse. 
 
 For the welter of waves white-winged as the 
 flash and the flight of a squadron of migrant 
 storks 
 
 Flew, flopped, fizzed, fluttered and burst in the 
 face of the strenuous trier from Rotherham, 
 Yorks, 
 
 And the tune of their sibilant surge was the 
 tune of the mellowing ferment of malted 
 hops, 
 
A Channel Record 
 
 2 5 
 
 And like to the hiss of a spluttering grill was 
 the spume of the Channel that seethed with 
 chops. 
 
 But livelier if aught could be livelier than he 
 was ere yet the storm leapt out of the South 
 
 We could hear his foam-bright laughter that 
 gurgled and mixed with the gurgling foam 
 in his mouth, 
 
 And the jest fell light from his lips as he 
 breasted the billow — “ There’s plenty for 
 money,” he said, 
 
 In a phrase that can only die when the heart of 
 England that beats for her best lies dead. 
 
 But a desolate waste yet sundered the sole of 
 his foot from the haven he fain would 
 be at, 
 
 And the sea’s wide throat that would never have 
 strained at a camel had nearly swallowed 
 the Gnat . 
 
 And at length with gradual reluctance he halted 
 and over the creaking bulwarks crept 
 
 And drank red wine, and rolled in the wallowing 
 trough, and was sick of the sea and slept. 
 
 And the eight-and-three-quarter glad mad hours 
 were over that won him the record for 
 pace, 
 
 Five leagues as the swart crow flies, and an 
 extra couple to add for the twin tide-race. 
 
 But snug in a rug we bore him back from a spot 
 some six miles short of his goal, 
 
26 
 
 Salvage 
 
 Of the sand-grey dunes of the city whose fame is 
 one with the fame of her burgess-roll. 
 
 And the dawn of the dusk came down from a 
 wind-swept sky as we put him on Dover 
 pier, 
 
 Insatiate of hope, and big with a sanguine pur- 
 pose to try it again next year. 
 
( 2 7 ) 
 
 THE POET TO HIS SUFFRAGETTE 
 
 If in that hour of triumph when you passed 
 (Accompanied by Do ye ken John Peel ?) 
 
 From dungeon-walls to break your dreadful fast 
 Where Mr. Miles purveys the fruity meal — 
 
 Forgive me if through absence, O my fair, 
 
 I was just then not there. 
 
 Present in spirit I could still observe 
 
 “ Shades of the prison-house ” upon your brow, 
 
 And, poised above, the halo’s airy curve, 
 
 Symbol of martyrdom’s accomplished vow ; 
 
 And hear the thud of your heroic feet 
 Shattering Chandos Street. 
 
 Perchance you found my absence rather odd 
 When you debouched from out your loathly 
 cell ? 
 
 Yet I had thought on you detained in quad, 
 Pallid and tousled ; I had pondered well 
 
 How great a thing you were, how near the sky, 
 And what a worm was I. 
 
 In dreams I waved a banner by your side 
 
 And frankly owned : “ This is no place for me ! 
 
 She needs a nobler mate, this virile bride, 
 
 A hardier brand than I could hope to be ; 
 
 I am not made (one has to be so tough) 
 
 Of the right martyr-stuff.” 
 
28 
 
 Salvage 
 
 Then I have certain foibles, all accurst, 
 
 Such as a lingering sentiment for sex, 
 
 A modest tap of humour, bound to burst 
 When you are prancing on a prostrate X ; 
 These would obscure my vision of the True ; 
 Yes, I should never do. 
 
 So, Loveliest, I release you. All is o’er. 
 
 I will not grumble ; I am only sad, 
 
 A little sad because I must deplore 
 
 Your uninstructed taste, who might have had 
 This pillowy heart to press, but chose to wed 
 A ballot-box instead ! 
 
( 2 9 ) 
 
 THE SLUMP IN POETS 
 
 [With condolences to Mr. John Lane, of the Bodley 
 Head.] 
 
 Lo ! where a Century lies still-born 
 
 The Patron’s tears come down like sleet, 
 
 And barren cries from lips forlorn 
 Ring on the roofs of Vigo Street ; 
 
 In vain among the groves to search, 
 
 Cheerless and bare and dumb and chilly, 
 Where vocal fowls were wont to perch 
 Just at the back of Piccadilly. 
 
 Scarce half a score of years have sped 
 (Who was it wrote that “ Art is long ” ?) 
 Since every hair on Bodley’s Head 
 Harboured a separate bird of song ; 
 
 Yes, that enchanted spot was then 
 A very Zoo of aves vavce — 
 
 The pencilled lark, the Gallic hen, 
 
 The yellow rook, the blue canary. 
 
 Imbibing Heliconian dew, 
 
 Nightjar and jay and turtle-dove 
 Sang Bacchus and his satyr crew, 
 
 Silenus, Liberty and Love ; 
 
30 
 
 Salvage 
 
 All day, and loudest after dark, 
 
 Their shrill and space-defying chorus 
 Would reach as far as Bedford Park, 
 
 It was so poignant, so sonorous. 
 
 But now — poor Hippocrene is dry, 
 
 Where once, with heavenly wings unfrayed, 
 Squadrons of prancing Pegasi 
 Swept up the Burlington Arcade ; 
 
 And if you ask, “ Where springs the rill 
 That laves the local Muse’s Mountain ? ” 
 You will be thought an imbecile, 
 
 And told to try the Shaftesbury Fountain. 
 
 I have a friend that lately found 
 A pilgrim, come from oversea, 
 
 Pacing, as if on holy ground, 
 
 The cloisters of The Albany, 
 
 Who said : “ Right here, Sir, I opine, 
 
 Your British Muse is still located ? ” 
 Whereat the other made no sign, 
 
 Deeming his man inebriated. 
 
 Where lies the cause that facts are thus ? 
 
 A dearth of topics ? Surely no ! 
 
 Why, what about the Motor-bus, 
 
 The Tubes and Bridge and L’Art Nouveau ? 
 May not the loftiest poet find 
 
 Inspiring stuff in modern movements, 
 
 And trace a beauty (undesigned) 
 
 Even in things like Strand “ improvements ” 
 
The Slump in Poets 
 
 3i 
 
 Alas ! the evil lies within ; 
 
 It is the lust for higher pay, 
 
 The passion (so debased) to win 
 Fortune by some more facile way ; 
 
 Greedy to pouch the larger loaf, 
 
 Young men who might have made our verses 
 Prefer to tout, or type, or chaufF, 
 
 Or ride as mutes on funeral hearses. 
 
 And this is why no bards occur. 
 
 None ever knows that aching void, 
 
 The hunger, prompting like a spur, 
 
 Which former genii enjoyed ; 
 
 For all the poets dead and gone 
 
 Whose Muse contrived to melt the nation 
 Habitually did it on 
 
 A regimen of strict starvation. 
 
 Yet is the fault not theirs alone 
 
 Who love their ease before their Art ; 
 
 The public’s self is somewhat prone 
 To let its stomach blunt its heart ; 
 
 For men in these expansive times 
 (Due, I am told, to fiscal freedom), 
 
 Though earth were black with angels’ rhymes, 
 Dine far too well to want to read ’em. 
 
( 32 ) 
 
 THE BIRTHRIGHT OF THE FREE 
 
 [Mr. Haldane has given it as his opinion that the 
 country “ will not be dragooned into Conscription.” In 
 other, and less conventional, terms, it is the inalienable 
 right of the freeborn British citizen to decline to lift a 
 finger in his country’s defence. This right is exercised by 
 about 95 per cent, of the employees of London ; and it is 
 to any one of that vast majority that these lines are 
 addressed.] 
 
 O specimen of London’s virile type, 
 
 A dashing figure with your farthing “ smoke,” 
 So much more gentlemanly than the pipe 
 Of us inferior folk ; 
 
 How brave you show at some salubrious Spa, 
 Or patronising Southend shrimps and tea, 
 Seductive in a so-called Panama 
 Beside the so-called sea. 
 
 Your town-bred wit enraptures all who use 
 The boarding-house abutting on the brine ; 
 And, could he follow it, would much amuse 
 The waiter from the Rhine. 
 
 Him you regard as matter for contempt, 
 
 Poor Teuton, seared with vile Conscription’s 
 brand, 
 
 Not, like yourself, a nobleman exempt 
 From duty to his land ! 
 
The Birthright of the Free 
 
 33 
 
 You are a free-born Englishman, and boast 
 That you can buy the necessary slaves — 
 Tommies that undertake to man the coast, 
 
 And Tars to walk the waves. 
 
 Besides, the leisure hours in which you slack 
 Are owed to Sport — the Briton’s primal law ; 
 You have to watch a game of ball, or back 
 A horse you never saw. 
 
 Splendid, mon brave ! you have a sporting nerve 
 Unknown to these dull churls of Teuton 
 breed ; 
 
 Yet here’s a man has learned at least to serve 
 His Fatherland at need. 
 
 He sings his Wacht am Rhein , and, if the thing 
 Wants watching with a rifle, he’ll be there ; 
 When you've invited Heaven to “ save the 
 King” 
 
 You think you’ve done your share. 
 
 They’ve taught him how to march in fighting 
 kit 
 
 And drill a likely hole in human butts ; 
 
 You have no discipline and couldn’t hit 
 A haystack, not for nuts. 
 
 His womankind are safe in their appeal 
 To his protection when the bullets skirl, 
 While your “ fionsy ” — well, I really feel 
 Quite sorry for the girl. 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 Salvage 
 
 For this poor “ conscript” whom the tyrants 
 grind, 
 
 Though he may miss your British freedom’s 
 scope, 
 
 Yet knows the use of arms, where you would find 
 Your legs your only hope. 
 
 So doff your hat to him when next you meet, 
 And pray that, when his ’prentice task is done, 
 If you should cross him on a raiding beat, 
 
 He’ll give you time to run. 
 
( 35 ) 
 
 ORAL QUESTIONS AND WRITTEN 
 ANSWERS 
 
 I. 
 
 Between the souffle and the ice, 
 
 When talk was running very small 
 Like little forage-hunting mice 
 
 Whose patter hardly counts at all — 
 
 You asked me, as a thing you vaguely pitied 
 (Noting the while another woman’s gown), 
 Whether it bored me, when the World had 
 flitted, 
 
 To stay behind in Town ? 
 
 I answered briefly, “ No, it don’t.” 
 
 (My many candid friends agree 
 That it has never been my wont 
 To shine in oral repartee ; 
 
 But only give me time and works of reference, 
 Those mental aids which Parliament permits, 
 And I can be a match, with all due deference, 
 For Ministerial wits.) 
 
 Madam — for I will here expand 
 That answer given a week ago — 
 
 It is indeed a desert land 
 
 That misses you in Mall and Row ; 
 
 D 2 
 
36 Salvage 
 
 One has, I grant, to suffer these privations 
 Among the annual debts that Duty owes, 
 But yet, believe me, there are consolations, 
 More than you might suppose. 
 
 Thus, while you fly to rural spots 
 
 (Like Cowes) and dress five times a day, 
 Our country cousins leave their cots 
 To paint the Town a rustic gray ; 
 
 I love to see them sampling Nelson’s column 
 Or Albert’s effigy (a certain draw), 
 
 Giddy with rapture tempered by a solemn 
 Touch of mysterious awe. 
 
 While you affect, in hall or bower, 
 
 With Nature’s moods to mate your mind, 
 You leave the finest, fairest flower 
 Of Town’s intelligence behind : — 
 
 The Civil Service Clerk who never ceases 
 From his employ of propping up the State ; 
 The Press that still composes masterpieces 
 Superbly up to date. 
 
 And one there is, a very god — 
 
 I’d spoil my summer just for this, 
 
 To tread the dust his feet have trod, 
 
 And share the same Metropolis ; 
 
 At other times there seems no special reason 
 Why he should occupy this earthly sphere, 
 But in the void of London’s empty season 
 He is without a peer. 
 
Oral Questions and Written Answers 37 
 
 His is the Editorial fist 
 With which, in August’s dearth of news, 
 Imaginary scribes insist 
 
 Upon the right to air their views ; 
 
 “ Pater - (you know the signature) - familias ,” 
 “Mother of Nine” “ Brixtonian” “Better Dead ” — 
 He represents the universal silly ass 
 Alone and on his head. 
 
 What you would deem the myriad shout 
 Of father, husband, mother, wife, 
 
 Touching the question, fraught with doubt, 
 
 “ Should Men adopt the Married Life ? ” — 
 
 The hints you get of dark domestic dramas, — 
 He fakes them by the column (that’s his 
 trade), 
 
 Clad in a cummerbund and pink pyjamas 
 At 8o° in the shade. 
 
 Madam, you have my answer there. 
 
 You see that I can well afford, 
 
 Even when you are gone elsewhere, 
 
 To face the risk of being bored ; 
 
 Be mine to live (though I may never enter 
 The priestly sanctum where he sits apart) 
 Within a shilling radius of the centre 
 Of England’s pulsing heart. 
 
38 
 
 Salvage 
 
 II. 
 
 In that most trying hour of all the day, 
 
 When hallowed custom claims this act of 
 grace, 
 
 That men should throw the unfinished weed away, 
 And join the ladies in another place ; 
 
 When, torpid with excess of meat and drink, 
 
 In single file, a ludicrous procession, 
 
 We feel the mood of exaltation sink 
 
 Down to the nadir, point of worst depression ; — 
 
 Noting my apathy, you deftly sought 
 
 A likely theme to pierce the carnal cloud, 
 
 And asked if I believed that human thought 
 Might by a special gift be read aloud ; 
 
 I answered “ Certainly ; for by your look 
 That gift is yours and, if you care to use it, 
 
 My mind just now is like an open book, 
 
 And you are very welcome to peruse it.” 
 
 That was my flattery. You read me wrong 
 When you divined that in my vapid brain 
 One lonely thought revolved : — How long, how 
 long 
 
 Before I get the chance to smoke again ! 
 
 I had another, chastely held in check, 
 
 And it was this (for absence makes me 
 bolder) : — 
 
 I really rather like the way her neck 
 
 Goes with the pretty dip to meet her shoulder. 
 
Oral Questions and Written Answers 39 
 
 But, gravely, — you who probe the inner man — 
 I’d not discourage you with cynic smile 
 From reading people’s thoughts as best as you 
 can, 
 
 If they are legible and worth your while ; 
 
 But here in so-called England you will find 
 This art of yours a thankless thing to follow, 
 For when you perforate our outer rind 
 
 You come on nothing but a yawning hollow. 
 
 Void of ideas, and vain of being void, 
 
 We eat and sleep and rise to play at ball, 
 Cocksure that we are far too well employed 
 To want to entertain a thought at all ; 
 
 You must not think between (or during) meals ! 
 
 This is our law ; for, if it grew more lenient, 
 Conscience might trouble us with vague appeals, 
 And that would prove extremely inconvenient. 
 
 Such is the reason why the race maintains 
 Its prophylactic vacancy of head, 
 
 And it would save you much expense of pains 
 To take the thoughts which aren’t inside as 
 read ; 
 
 Indeed, dear lady, till our habits mend 
 And yield material for you to handle, 
 Thought-reading seems a game on which to 
 spend 
 
 Only a very little length of candle. 
 
40 
 
 Salvage 
 
 III. 
 
 When you, my boy, with ill-considered riot 
 Raided the sanctum where I wished to brood 
 Over my luncheon, and in perfect quiet 
 Assimilate my food ; 
 
 When, breathing airs of most untimely revel, 
 Blent with ozone, the famous Norfolk brand, 
 You advocated “ rounders ” on the level 
 Of loose retarding sand ; 
 
 I saw the scene ; I saw as in a vision, 
 
 Knowing my length of years and what I 
 weighed, 
 
 I should infallibly provoke derision 
 From the Marine Parade. 
 
 Therefore I pleaded eld and eld’s infirmities, 
 Urging that, if there ever comes a stage 
 When such pursuits have reached their natural 
 term, it is 
 
 At forty odd (my age). 
 
 And lo ! like Eve’s, when she secured the apple 
 Which opened out new worlds and wondrous 
 strange, 
 
 Your intellect at first refused to grapple 
 With life’s extended range. 
 
 The monstrous figures left you almost blinded, 
 Till Pity, which my parlous case begat, 
 
 Moved you to ask me if I greatly minded 
 Being as old as that. 
 
Oral Questions and Written Answers 41 
 
 I answered : “ Age, my boy, is manhood’s glory, 
 So it be sequent on a well-spent youth ; ” 
 Whereat you smiled as one who hears a story 
 Palpably void of truth. 
 
 Yet you were wrong in thinking, gay young 
 scoffer, 
 
 “ The grapes are sour at which he grasps in 
 vain ; ” 
 
 I would not be, not if I had the offer, 
 
 A bounding boy again. 
 
 The ardours incident to adolescence, 
 
 So like its favoured beverage, ginger-pop, 
 Where flatness follows close on effervescence, 
 
 I am content to drop. 
 
 King Solomon, arrived at perfect sanity 
 (He had of course a more bizarre career), 
 Ventured the view that life was largely vanity, 
 To which I say : “ Hear, hear ! ” 
 
 Not easily we come to these conclusions ; 
 
 It costs us something — and we bear the 
 trace — 
 
 To sacrifice a lot of dear illusions, 
 
 To yield, with smiling face, 
 
 Boyhood’s instinctive claim to fair requital 
 For labour of the hand or heart or mind, 
 
 And learn that what we once considered vital 
 Is nothing of the kind. 
 
42 
 
 Salvage 
 
 So, though I wish my limbs were more elastic, 
 I like the balanced calm that Age enjoys, 
 Having survived the process, rudely plastic, 
 That makes for equipoise. 
 
 P.S. — I think it might perhaps be better, 
 
 Not to acidulate your youthful cup, 
 
 And so, my boy, I will not send this letter, 
 But simply tear it up. 
 
( 43 ) 
 
 REFLECTIONS ON THE TURF 
 
 Regarded as England’s great source of “joy in widest 
 commonalty spread.” 
 
 England, I hear your health is simply rotten, 
 That you have lost your old prehensile clutch 
 On popular ideals, and forgotten 
 
 Those common faiths of which a single touch, 
 Sharp as a pin, 
 
 Was warranted to keep the nation kin. 
 
 They tell me how a gulf as deep as Ocean 
 
 Divides us, class from class, and kind from 
 kind ; 
 
 That as a race we cease to share emotion, 
 
 Nor can you simultaneously find 
 The self-same flutter 
 Of pulses in a palace and a gutter. 
 
 I’ll not believe it. I refuse to credit 
 That view of England’s vitals gone amiss ; 
 
 I say — and other optimists who edit 
 
 The Sporting Press will bear me out in this — 
 One thing remains 
 
 That Jives the universal heart and brains. 
 
44 
 
 Salvage 
 
 It is the Turf ! Ah ! there you have a passion 
 Which all, without respect of caste, may blow 
 Their time, their talents, and their ready cash on, 
 Conscious of myriad types, for weal or woe, 
 Sharing their lot, 
 
 According as the Favourite wins or not. 
 
 Yon Arab imp that, having staked his dinner, 
 Borrows a Star to find he’s won a bob — 
 
 Not Midas, with a “monkey” on the winner, 
 Feels in his fatted heart a livelier throb ! 
 
 He and the boy 
 
 Thrill with an indistinguishable joy ! 
 
 Is it not odd that hitherto no poet 
 
 Has thought to mention how, with lord and 
 serf, 
 
 Whether they plunge thereon, or rest below it, 
 There is no equaliser like the Turf ? 
 
 Whatso our claim, 
 
 The Starting Price is one , and Death the same . 
 
( 45 ) 
 
 THE MAN THAT MIGHT 
 
 “C’etait un homme d’un bien beau passe.” 
 
 Of all the heroes I have met, 
 
 Condemned to unfulfilled renown, 
 
 One figure holds my fancy yet — 
 
 It is the late Alexis Brown. 
 
 Long ere he burst his primal gum 
 
 His friends expressed the sanguine hope 
 
 That he would certainly become 
 A credit to his horoscope. 
 
 His lessons caused him no concern ; 
 
 He never deigned to strive or cry ; 
 
 And if he failed at any turn 
 It was because he didn’t try. 
 
 As buds beneath the vernal sun 
 His native reputation grew, 
 
 Chiefly by what he could have done 
 If he had only chosen to. 
 
 At school Alexis took the lead, 
 
 Just like an heir of ancient kings, 
 
 Exempted from the vulgar need 
 Of actually doing things. 
 
4 6 
 
 Salvage 
 
 He bore his undisputed fame 
 To Oxford (learning’s awful seat), 
 
 Yet never justified the same 
 By any noticeable feat. 
 
 Had he but read a single book, 
 
 He must no doubt have topped the tree ; 
 
 Yet, as a fact, he simply took 
 A portion of the Pass degree. 
 
 He might with perfect ease have gained 
 A triple Blue, as rumour goes ; 
 
 Only he somehow felt constrained 
 To keep his talents in repose. 
 
 He ate his dinners term by term, 
 
 And very nearly joined the Bar, 
 
 But still omitted to confirm 
 The promise of his natal star. 
 
 So to the end Alexis fared, 
 
 And when he ultimately died 
 
 His faithful backers all declared 
 He could have lived, if he had tried. 
 
 Even in death he shrank from strife, 
 
 And in his epitaph you’ll find 
 
 This record of a quiet life : 
 
 “ He left a great career behind” 
 
( 47 ) 
 
 TO VENUS, SHOT IN HER TRACKS 
 
 ’Twas but a week, a little week away — 
 
 Beneath the usual scowl of summer skies, 
 Pending the absence of the orb of day, 
 
 I sunned myself against your glowing eyes, 
 Until my blood, whose temperature was nil , 
 
 Got fairly off the chill. 
 
 Gold were your locks, and most of them your own ; 
 
 Your lips were such a nice geranium red ; 
 
 And on your cheeks the cherry’s ruddy tone 
 Was not too ruddy. Briefly, from your head 
 Downwards, and ending in your dainty feet, 
 
 I thought you rather sweet. 
 
 But now what change is this, what sudden blight ? 
 
 For I have seen you in the halfpenny Press 
 Snapped at a garden-party, and the sight 
 Of what was lately so much loveliness, 
 Blistered and blurred and damaged past repair, 
 Has blanched my raven hair. 
 
 Your features, as reported in the print, 
 
 Are simply pulp and black as any crow’s ; 
 Your eyes, a brace of blobs, reveal no hint 
 Of speculation, and your charming nose, 
 
 Your charming nose that had my chest in thrall, 
 Cannot be traced at all. 
 
48 Salvage 
 
 What devastating cataclysm has wrought 
 
 The hideous shock that leaves your face so 
 marred ? 
 
 Can you yourself have been (distressing thought !) 
 
 The prey of passion hopelessly ill-starred ? 
 
 I too have lost my heart, and mourn the theft, 
 Yet have some features left. 
 
 Can Art have played you false ? Ah no, I cry ; 
 
 The Kodak which illumes our morning sheets, 
 Mirror of Actuality, cannot lie ! 
 
 So for a solace I must turn to Keats : 
 
 Truth equals Beauty ! — that was Keats’s view. 
 Let’s hope he really knew. 
 
( 49 ) 
 
 “SWEET USES OF OBESITY” 
 
 [Lines suggested by an article under the above title, 
 from the pen of Mrs. Ernest Ames, who discusses the 
 popularity, the social precedence, the immunity from 
 control and criticism, enjoyed by the very, very fat 
 woman.] 
 
 What guerdon of praise shall I give her, 
 
 What measure of thanks for her meed, 
 
 Who comes to release and deliver 
 My soul in its uttermost need ; 
 
 Whose breath is the perfume of Parma 
 In seasons of dulness and drouth, 
 
 Who puts with imperative charm a 
 New song in my mouth ? 
 
 To the form that is elfin and fragile 
 And slightly defective of lung, — 
 
 To the limbs that are lusty and agile 
 As is the opossum, when young, — 
 
 I have bowed, I have bent, as in duty, 
 Unnumbered and dolorous knees, 
 
 But my heart never burst for a beauty 
 Distinctly obese. 
 
 Yet here, I am told, is a topic 
 Inviting the bibulous bard, 
 
 Like a well in the waste of a tropic, 
 
 Whose price is as precious as nard ; 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 Salvage 
 
 The report of that pearly oasis 
 Ah, had I but earlier known, 
 
 I had sung long ago of her graces, 
 
 Sweet seventeen stone ! 
 
 Though her figure be other than airy, 
 
 Though its “note” be the largeness of earth, 
 Yet her temper is that of a fairy 
 Addicted to methods of mirth ; 
 
 Exuding a natural joyance, 
 
 Her jests have an infinite scope, 
 
 And in bathing she bobs with the buoyance 
 Of somebody’s Soap. 
 
 By the calm of her weight that is welter 
 Immune from the menace of shock, 
 
 In her shade half a dozen may shelter 
 As under the lee of a rock ; 
 
 There is that in her mountainous motion, 
 
 A force elementally free, 
 
 Which recalls to a student of Ocean 
 The surge of the sea. 
 
 In the glow that her presence diffuses 
 She fares as a favourite guest ; 
 
 Her pyramidal structure excuses 
 What licence would ruin the rest ; 
 
 No rivals, for Nature has built her 
 Compact of the substance of ten, 
 
 Would suspect her of pounding a philtre 
 For stealing their men. 
 
“ Sweet Uses of Obesity” 51 
 
 She is set with her face to the horses, 
 
 She flops in the roomiest chair, 
 
 And her bed, as a matter of course, is 
 A twin of the wonder of Ware ; 
 
 They allow her the lengthiest tether, 
 
 Her lines are in Benjamin’s lot, 
 
 And she says what occurs to her, whether 
 They like it or not. 
 
 O profuse and imposing and passive, 
 
 O dame of the devious waist, 
 
 Whose circuit, amorphous and massive, 
 
 These arms could have never embraced, 
 You may puff, it is true, like a porpoise, 
 
 And heave like a wallowing hulk, 
 
 Yet your heart is as big as your corpus, 
 
 Our Lady of Bulk ! 
 
 e 2 
 
 imm 
 
 limVERSSTY OF lUJWte 
 
( 52 ) 
 
 CEDANT ARMA TOG^E ? 
 
 [From a German Ministerial decree : “ Soldiers who 
 hesitate to kill or wound offending civilians are unworthy 
 to wear their uniforms, and render themselves liable to 
 imprisonment.” This decree is intended to emphasize 
 the fundamental idea in German militarism that military 
 men are a class of society far superior to civilians. The 
 following lines are respectfully placed in the lips of the 
 German Minister of War.] 
 
 Pride of the Fatherland ! Superb police, 
 Whose business is to keep in constant fettle, 
 Be it not said the rust of slothful peace 
 Has paralysed your military mettle ; 
 
 Prove that a courage equal to the best 
 Still agitates the Teuton’s mailed chest. 
 
 You cannot always wallow in a sea 
 
 Of Gallic gore, or bulge with heathen booty ; 
 The Watch upon the Rhine or else the Spree 
 Entails a homely round of bloodless duty ; 
 But, while the counter-jumper walks the streets, 
 Scope should be surely found for martial feats. 
 
 There is a vicious habit, so we hear, 
 
 Which Army men are very rightly shocked at, 
 Of showing disregard for warlike gear — 
 
 The Captain’s corset and the General’s cocked- 
 hat ; 
 
 Men do not sink their dazzled eyes and faint 
 Before the warrior in his awful paint. 
 
Cedant Arma Tog^e ? 
 
 53 
 
 Yet, as the Brahman has his holy cow, 
 
 Or the primeval Hottentot his totem, 
 
 Two things there are to which we Germans bow 
 (Almost too widely known for me to quote 
 ’em), 
 
 Two Faiths, our final stay in stress and storm — 
 The Kaiser and the Kaiser’s uniform. 
 
 And shall a man of mere commercial breed, 
 Lacking the elements of true gentility, 
 
 Pass in his homespun cloth or rustic tweed 
 Unchallenged ’twixt the wind and your 
 nobility ? 
 
 Not while you wear a sabre at your side 
 With which to perforate his paltry hide ! 
 
 Should such an one (to take a common case), 
 Emboldened by excessive bouts of Munich 
 In some beer-garden which you deign to 
 grace, 
 
 Brush disrespectfully against your tunic, 
 
 Or soil your Bluchers with civilian mud — 
 
 Out with your instant blade and have his 
 blood ! 
 
 Untev den Linden , when the sun is low, 
 
 And, in a leisure hour exempt from drilling, 
 With rigid gait and clanking spurs you go, 
 
 A dream of godlike beauty, simply killing, 
 
 If any knave disputes the path you tread, 
 
 Your falchion should at once remove his head. 
 
54 
 
 Salvage 
 
 Noblesse , of course, oblige. You mustn’t trail 
 Your sabre-tache for vulgar churls to step on, 
 But seize occasion and you cannot fail 
 
 To find the man you want to flesh your 
 weapon ; 
 
 Should he (unarmed, for choice) provoke the 
 strife, 
 
 Why, then your course is clear; you take his 
 life! 
 
 Let not a low civilian wipe the eye 
 
 Of but “ a single Pomeranian Grenadier ; ” 
 Rather let Art, with Laws and Learning, die — 
 Pursuits to which the meaner types of men 
 adhere ; 
 
 Pd sooner even dislocate our Trade 
 Than let the Army’s honour be mislaid. 
 
 That honour it is yours to guard unstained, 
 Burnished as though by frequent use of emery, 
 Keeping our glorious record well maintained, 
 Just as our mighty Lord of blessed memory, 
 The ne’er-to-be-forgotten William One, 
 
 Would, were he living, like to see it done. 
 
( 55 ) 
 
 TO CHRISTINE 
 
 A Quinquennial Address from her Uncle. 
 
 My dear, when you were half your age, 
 (2’s into io ?) a good while back, 
 
 I wrote about you on a page 
 Of Mr. Punch's Almanack. 
 
 How you are gaining on me quick ! 
 
 Your years were then ^ of mine, 
 
 But Time, who does arithmetic, 
 
 Has made the ratio 2 to 9 ! 
 
 And now that o’er your shining head 
 This second lustre (if you know 
 What lustres are) has been and fled 
 Into the Land of Longago — 
 
 And since you somehow failed to get 
 Those earlier verses off by heart 
 I’ll make you up another set. 
 
 So that’s the Preface. Here we start. 
 
 Dear, as I see you nice and small, 
 Agile of leg and sound of lung, 
 And rather wistfully recall 
 
 What it was like to feel so young, 
 
56 
 
 Salvage 
 
 When grown-ups seemed, in taste and size, 
 Removed from me immensely far — 
 
 I often ask with vague surmise 
 How old you think we really are. 
 
 Sometimes I fancy you behave 
 As if you found us past repair — 
 
 One foot already in the grave, 
 
 The other very nearly there ! 
 
 Then you are wrong, and you must try 
 To take a more enlightened view ; 
 
 You’re not so much more young than I, 
 Nor I so much more old than you. 
 
 For, though you have the supple joints 
 That go so well with childhood’s mirth, 
 
 In certain elemental points 
 
 You are the age of Mother Earth. 
 
 And while it’s true I’ve ceased to hop 
 Out of my bed at peep of dawn, 
 
 Have lost the weasel’s power to pop, 
 
 Nor can outrun the light-foot fawn, 
 
 Yet otherwise I’m far from old ; 
 
 The words I use, so long and queer, 
 
 My manner, stern, abrupt, and cold — 
 
 All this is just pretence, my dear. 
 
 As when you act your nursery plays, 
 
 And ape your elders’ talk and looks, 
 
 So I have copied grown-up ways 
 Either from life or else from books. 
 
To Christine 
 
 57 
 
 But in my heart, its hopes and fears, 
 Its need of love, its faith in men, 
 
 I yet may be, for all my years, 
 
 As young as little girls of ten. 
 
( 58 ) 
 
 HUMOURS OF AN ENGLISH 
 SUMMER 
 
 “ Have you forgotten, love, so soon 
 That day, that filthy day, in June ? ” 
 
 Drawing-room Ballad. 
 
 “ Wait, little flutterer, till June is come !” 
 
 (Thus I addressed my panting heart in 
 Spring) ; 
 
 “ Wait till the full-fledged woodlands fairly 
 hum 
 
 With tuny birds and beetles on the wing ; 
 Then by the river’s marge, inside a bower 
 Latticed to let the blue sky gleam above, 
 
 I’d have you pluck the psychologic hour, 
 
 And ventilate your love.” 
 
 Bilious with joy deferred, at last, at last, 
 
 I fixed for early June a trysting-place 
 (Down Taplow way) familiar from a past 
 
 Chequered with lively memories of the chase ; 
 Nor had the interval of tarrying hopes 
 
 Been wholly wasted ; I’d improved the time 
 Learning my words — a string of sunny tropes 
 Drawn from the season’s prime. 
 
Humours of an English Summer 59 
 
 The fateful day arrived — a perfect beast, 
 Worthy of March when at his lion’s tricks. 
 Dawn, rosy-nosed (the wind was Nor’-Nor’- 
 East), 
 
 Ushered a temperature of 46°. 
 
 Through icy rain descending like the plague, 
 Close-furled in Jaeger wool and mackintosh, 
 Yet whistling “ Dock die Liebe f and den Weg” 
 
 I sallied forth — splosh, splosh. 
 
 We met ; we slithered down the oozy bank ; 
 Like a stuck pig the sodden rowlocks 
 screamed ; 
 
 Her steering, always poor, was simply rank, 
 
 And from her picture-hat a torrent streamed ; 
 We found the bower beneath a storm of hail, 
 Songless save where a husky cuckoo crowed ; 
 And once I thought I heard a nightingale 
 Curse in the Doric mode. 
 
 We crouched below a straining copper beech, 
 Munching from time to time a camphor pill ; 
 And when I touched on love my flowers of 
 speech 
 
 Drooped in an atmosphere forlornly chill ; 
 
 I cannot blame her answer, which was blunt — 
 Cold feet will thus affect the nicest girl ; 
 Besides, the damp had disarranged her “ front,” 
 Putting it out of curl. 
 
6o 
 
 Salvage 
 
 That night, alone before a blazing log, 
 
 And curtained from the cruel leaden skies, 
 
 I thanked my stars, above the steaming grog, 
 For that fiasco which had made me wise ; 
 
 “ Give me no mere fair-weather wife,” I said, 
 
 “ But something like a rock that’s roughly 
 hewn, 
 
 To face with careless front the coarse, ill bred, 
 Jibes of an English June.” 
 
( 6i ) 
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF MOTLEY 
 
 Lady, when we sat together, 
 
 And your flow of talk that turned 
 On the Park, the Play, the Weather, 
 Left me frankly unconcerned, 
 
 I could see how hard you labour’d 
 Till your brain was stiff and sore, 
 Never having yet been neighbour’d 
 By so dull a bore. 
 
 Later on, from information 
 
 Gathered elsewhere after lunch, 
 
 You had got at my vocation, 
 
 Learned that I belonged to Punch , 
 
 And in tones of milk and honey 
 You invited me to speak 
 On the art of being funny, 
 
 Funny once a week. 
 
 ’Tis a task that haunts me waking, 
 
 Like a vampire on the chest, 
 
 Spoils my peace, prevents my taking 
 Joyance in another’s jest ; 
 
 Makes me move abroad distracted, 
 Trailing speculative feet ; 
 
 Makes me wear at home a rack’d head 
 In a dripping sheet. 
 
62 
 
 Salvage 
 
 Women hint that I am blinded 
 
 To their chaste, but obvious, charms ; 
 Sportsmen deem me absent-minded 
 When addressed to feats of arms : 
 
 If the sudden partridge rises 
 I but rend the neighbouring air, 
 
 And the rabbit’s rude surprises 
 Take me unaware. 
 
 Life for me’s no game of skittles 
 As at first you might opine ; 
 
 I have lost my love of victuals 
 And a pretty taste in wine ; 
 
 When at lunch your talk was wasted, 
 Did you notice what occurred, — 
 
 How I left the hock untasted, 
 
 How I passed the bird ? 
 
 So, if you would grant a favour, 
 
 In your orisons recall 
 One whose smile could scarce be graver 
 If his mouth were full of gall ; 
 
 Let your lips (that shame the ruby) 
 
 Pray for mine all wan and bleak 
 With the strain of trying to be 
 Funny every week. 
 
( 63 ) 
 
 OF TOP-DRESSING 
 
 “ Cui flavam religas comam ? ” 
 
 Betty, I have it in my honest heart 
 To let you know with what a pure com- 
 passion 
 
 I see you tire your head (and deem it smart) 
 
 In the flamboyant mode approved by Fashion — 
 Something between 
 A stuffy turban and a tambourine. 
 
 Is it because few women dare defy 
 
 The other women’s tyrannous dictation ? 
 
 Or that you hope to melt some manly eye 
 And wring therefrom the sort of adoration 
 That innocent souls 
 Offer to angels in their aureoles ? 
 
 If that’s your object, I am not aware 
 
 Who is the guileless youth, the verdant 
 stripling, 
 
 For whom you bind your sheaves of mellow 
 hair 
 
 By processes of artificial rippling, 
 
 Using a frame 
 
 With borrowed fluff to overlay the same. 
 
64 Salvage 
 
 It cannot be for me ; for middle age 
 
 Leaves me, to such allurements, cool — or 
 coolish ; 
 
 It must be someone else, less timely sage, 
 
 More simple, more impressionably foolish; 
 Some one (or two ?) 
 
 Unskilled to doubt you genuine through and 
 through. 
 
 Yet, if you care to hear the candid truth, 
 
 From one who still preserves a sentient fraction 
 Of what has been a heart that in its youth 
 Thrilled to the best capillary attraction — 
 
 I can’t admire 
 
 These bulging haloes rigged on padded wire. 
 
 It’s not as if your hair was in decline, 
 
 Nor do you need to have your head diminished, 
 Or to obscure a scalp of poor design 
 
 Which Nature roughly blocked and left 
 unfinished ; 
 
 I’ve always said 
 
 You had a rather nicely modelled head. 
 
 But that portentous bulk above your brow 
 Makes all the rest beneath seem small and petty, 
 Especially your brains ; and anyhow — 
 
 To be sincere (you wish me, don’t you Betty, 
 To be sincere ?) — 
 
 Brains aren’t your strongest feature, are they, 
 dear ? 
 
( 65 ) 
 
 A POLICE TRAP; 
 
 Or, The Renewal of Youth 
 
 “ Open her out ! ” my host had said ; 
 
 And on the instant word 
 
 The mobile monster flew ahead 
 Like a prodigious bird. 
 
 Her thirsty throttle, gaping free, 
 
 Drank up the way like wine ; 
 
 I almost felt that I must be 
 Upon the Chatham line. 
 
 From time to time she touched the earth 
 And pulverised its crust, 
 
 And I remarked, with impious mirth : 
 
 “ We too shall soon be dust ! ” 
 
 Far off the cyclist heard our hoot, 
 
 And fell into the ditch ; 
 
 We scattered man and fowl and brute, 
 Scarce seeing which was which. 
 
 Their curses followed, choked with grit, 
 While I, who paid no heed, 
 
 Composed a humorous song (or fytte) 
 Largely in praise of Speed. 
 
 * * ^ * * 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 Salvage 
 
 A sudden whistle rent the air ! 
 
 Instinctively she stopped, 
 
 For at the signal from his lair 
 A stealthy peeler popped. 
 
 As one whose joy comes doubly sweet 
 From triumph’s long delay, 
 
 Slowly and trailing tedious feet 
 He moved upon his prey. 
 
 There sat we waiting, trapped and dumb, 
 And eyed that awful X 
 Like rabbits when the snarers come 
 To wring their little necks. 
 
 Two more arrived ; their clothes were plain 
 One from his hedge-row bower 
 Had timed us going like a train 
 At fifty miles an hour. 
 
 I looked the liar in the face. 
 
 Fearless of fine or quad, 
 
 “ I should myself have put the pace,” 
 
 Said I, “ at eighty odd ! ” 
 
 And then, as in a general hush 
 They took the chauffeur’s name, 
 
 Over my cheeks there stole the blush 
 Of pleasurable shame. 
 
 I saw my truant childhood’s years 
 In memory’s vision rise, 
 
 And lo ! the happy, happy tears 
 Coursed from my goggled eyes. 
 
A Police Trap 
 
 67 
 
 How long it seemed since I was whacked 
 For trespass ! ah, how long 
 Since I was taken in the act 
 Of doing something wrong ! 
 
 Copper, my thanks ! Through you I know 
 Once more those fearful joys 
 Which the Olympian gods bestow 
 On lawless little boys ! 
 
( 68 ) 
 
 TO A FORTUNATE BABE 
 
 To whom, however, One Great Gift has been 
 denied. 
 
 Infant, whose orbs — the blue of bluest china — 
 Scan with a like dispassionate regard 
 Your toys, your Christmas-tree, your dolly 
 Dinah, 
 
 And me, the motley bard ; 
 
 Little you dream (nor could it be expected 
 Of one so innocent, so freshly green) 
 
 How near — had history’s course a shade 
 deflected — 
 
 Our kinship might have been. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago, when I was younger, 
 And wore a figure less maturely blown, 
 
 I loved your Granny with a wasting hunger 
 That gnawed me to the bone. 
 
 She was a girl of more than common merit ; 
 When I would jest she smiled from ear to 
 ear; 
 
 Also she promised shortly to inherit 
 £ 5,000 a year. 
 
To a Fortunate Babe 
 
 69 
 
 Judging from well-directed sighs and glances 
 (Mute testimonials), I deemed that she 
 Deftly reciprocated my advances ; 
 
 But — it was not to be ! 
 
 Her captious father clumsily collided 
 With our arrangements, castled high in air ; 
 Without consulting me, the brute decided 
 That I must woo elsewhere. 
 
 I thought to drown myself, but Heaven stayed 
 me, 
 
 No river being handy but the Cam ; 
 
 Therefore instead I took an oath that made me 
 The celibate I am. 
 
 My lady did the like, but hers was broken ; 
 
 She wed Another One — I can’t think how ; 
 And you are here to-day, a living token 
 Of Granny’s fractured vow. 
 
 Infant, I blame you not at all, nor grudge it, 
 Though fair the gale that on your future 
 blows, 
 
 Promising health and beauty and a budget 
 Rosy as your own toes. 
 
 And yet, whatever favour Fortune’s hand adds, 
 One grace you lack that must be missing still : 
 You might have counted me among your 
 Grandads — 
 
 And now you never will. 
 
( 70 ) 
 
 ARMS AND THE WOMAN 
 
 [The two following themes do not represent the author’s 
 own views or experience, but those of a person of strong 
 anti-militarist tendencies.] 
 
 i. — S eeing Red. 
 
 Though I am not so young as then, 
 
 I still remember rather well 
 
 The first (and last) occasion when 
 I disapproved of Asphodel ; 
 
 But so it is with love at sight 
 
 That later on — some idle morning — 
 
 In breaks a sudden stream of light 
 Without the faintest previous warning. 
 
 We are so easily misled ! 
 
 I judged of her by outward looks 
 
 As one who would not lose her head 
 To heroes out of story-books ; 
 
 Her name, although a little rare, 
 
 Lent me no hint that might alarm me, 
 
 Nor could I guess her pensive air 
 Concealed a passion for the Army. 
 
 (Mind you, I like the soldier-class, 
 
 I count them modest, frank and plain ; 
 
 In their companionship I pass 
 
 Moments aloof from mental strain ; 
 
Arms and the Woman 
 
 But there’s a courage which can be 
 Tested without a bloody quarrel ; 
 
 This nobler kind occurs in me, 
 
 And may be best described as “ moral.”) 
 
 It chanced, upon a dismal day, 
 
 We studied photographic views, 
 
 Mycenae’s walls — the Appian Way — 
 
 The haunt of Umbria’s famed recluse ; 
 Was it the cypress, lone and stark, 
 
 Standing as sentry o’er Assisi, 
 
 That wrung from her this raw remark : 
 
 “ Wouldn’t you love to win the V.C. ?” 
 
 Somehow it seemed in doubtful taste 
 
 That, when I hoped her heart was stirred 
 By thoughts of how St. Francis traced 
 Kinship with beast and flower and bird, 
 Taming his flesh until it shone 
 
 With a refined and ghostly pallor — 
 
 She should invite opinions on 
 
 A copper prize for carnal Valour ! 
 
 I answered her. My tones were bland, 
 
 And yet perhaps the words were hard ; 
 But anyone will understand 
 
 About my feelings being jarred ; 
 
 I said, “ Let nursery-maids adore 
 A medal sewn on crude vermilion ; 
 
 I woo not such, nor ever soar 
 To virtues other than civilian ! ” 
 
72 
 
 Salvage 
 
 And then my thoughts went back to one 
 Who from his wisdom dropped this pearl : 
 Should you propose to wed , my son, 
 
 Beware the Guardsman type of girl ! 
 
 ’Twas Heaven revived that warning voice, 
 And, as I closed our painful session, 
 
 I knew that I had made the choice 
 Of Valour’s better part — Discretion ! 
 
 II. — The Ladies’ Cavalry Club. 
 
 It was a solemn seance composed of martial 
 dames, 
 
 Discussing likely candidates with military claims; 
 
 The doors were doubly bolted ; but, through a 
 little bird, 
 
 I am enabled to report exactly what occurred. 
 
 The Amazon presiding over the lists of Mars 
 
 Was Lady Susan Cropper, of the Eighty-eighth 
 Hussars, 
 
 And she had just put forward the name of Bella 
 S queers, 
 
 Third cousin to a captain in “ The Bounding 
 Buccaneers.” 
 
 Then spoke a Horse Guard’s lady, a welter- 
 weight was she. 
 
 And rode her husband’s chargers to hounds at 
 sixteen-three : 
 
Arms and the Woman 
 
 73 
 
 “ I ask for information ; pray, who is 4 Bella 
 Squeers ’ ? 
 
 And who , by all that’s holy, are 4 The Bounding 
 Buccaneers ’ ? 
 
 44 Cavalry of the Line I know ; one meets them 
 here and there ; ” 
 
 (“The Liner she's a lady!" observed the angry 
 Chair) ; 
 
 44 But if you mean to keep select you simply 
 can't allow 
 
 The claims of fancy regiments raised Heaven 
 alone knows how ! ” 
 
 At this a stout Yeo woman repressed a rising 
 sob, 
 
 And called the previous speaker a horrid, horrid 
 snob ; 
 
 And said that, if the Junior Arm should fail to 
 get its dues, 
 
 Herself would bar all candidates related to the 
 Blues. 
 
 Dare I describe the issue, what language rent 
 the air, 
 
 What sudden transformations took place in 
 people’s hair, 
 
 Or how a West Kent’s aunt-in-law had both her 
 pince-nez broke, 
 
 And something awful happened to a Kitchen 
 Lancer’s toque ? 
 
74 
 
 Salvage 
 
 A Colonel’s wife (“ The Dye-hards ”) betrayed a 
 natural pique 
 
 On being drenched with coffee all down her 
 dexter cheek, 
 
 And, though of temperate habits and never 
 known to faint, 
 
 Swore frankly like a trooper, and swooned from 
 loss of paint. 
 
 I shrink to estimate the cost in limb and even 
 life, 
 
 Had not a nervous member screamed, “ I 
 disapprove of strife ; 
 
 Stop ! or I fetch my father, a noted man of 
 gore, 
 
 Experienced in handling a ‘ Gyppy ’ Camel 
 Corps ! ” 
 
 Great peace ensued. They kissed again, like 
 dear mock-turtle doves, 
 
 Household and Line and Yeomanry, and called 
 each other “ loves ” ; 
 
 And by unanimous consent elected Bella Squeers, 
 
 Third cousin to a captain in “ The Bounding 
 Buccaneers.” 
 
( 75 ) 
 
 A SMART SET-BACK 
 
 [Lord Crewe, in referring publicly to the so-called 
 “Smart Set,” said that he had never succeeded in "identi- 
 fying the members of that sinister association.”] 
 
 Long ago, the sport of vain ambition, 
 
 I had nursed a secret whim 
 For establishing a firm position 
 Dans le mouvement (in the swim) ; 
 
 I had had my high and eager heart set 
 On the grandest prize of all, 
 
 On a close communion with the Smart Set, 
 
 On a place, however small, 
 
 ’Mid the heroes and the heroines of the upper 
 servants’ hall. 
 
 Poring over my patrician papers, 
 
 Packed with many a purple plum, 
 
 I had read about their week-end capers, 
 
 And the things they made to hum ; 
 
 I had heard of priceless goods and chattels 
 Cheerfully reduced to hay ; 
 
 Heard of how they fought in bolster-battles, 
 Took the staircase on a tray, 
 
 And in fact were rather wicked in a reckless sort 
 of way. 
 
 And the thought would make my bosom flutter 
 With desire of “ seeing life,” 
 
 With the lust of laying slides of butter 
 For the Worldling and his Wife; 
 
76 Salvage 
 
 But alas ! I knew no country houses 
 Where my hostess left us free 
 To indulge in these refined carouses, 
 
 And the fear occurred to me : 
 
 “ Shall I never then contribute to the vogue of 
 Bernard V. ! 
 
 “ Shall my aim in life be wholly wasted ! 
 
 Shall they say, when I am dead, 
 
 ‘ There he lies, poor worm, who never tasted 
 Of the wine when it was red ; 
 
 Never drenched his partner’s frock with soda, 
 Never took a manly part 
 In a bout of booby-traps, or showed a 
 Trace of true creative Art ; 
 
 In a word, to put it broadly, he was never really 
 smart ! ’ ” 
 
 Yet there’s one who, haply being jealous 
 Of a so exclusive ring, 
 
 Mocks the Smart Set, has the face to tell us 
 He suspects there’s no such thing ; 
 
 And I find a certain consolation 
 In his bold agnostic view 
 Of that “ sinister association,” 
 
 And I think, my lord of Crewe, 
 
 I will be content remaining well outside the pale 
 — with you. 
 
( 77 ) 
 
 A NEW PROFESSION 
 
 Or, What to do with our Sons ? 
 
 My hopeless boy ! when I compare 
 (Claiming a father’s right to do so) 
 
 Your hollow brain, your vacuous air, 
 
 With all the time, and wealth and care 
 Lavished upon your mental trousseau ; 
 
 Over my waistcoat’s ample pit 
 
 This ravening grief holds constant session — 
 That through a total lack of wit 
 You are deplorably unfit 
 
 To follow any known profession. 
 
 No tutelary genius shone 
 
 About your scalp in school or college ; 
 Therefore you cannot be a Don, 
 
 Or anything reposing on 
 
 A fundamental plinth of knowledge. 
 
 You never nursed the godlike spark 
 That kindles men to serve the nation ; 
 
 I trow that, as a Treasury clerk, 
 
 You never could have made your mark 
 Or even earned a decoration. 
 
78 Salvage 
 
 The medical prelim, would mar 
 
 Your hopes of making healthy men sick ; 
 
 And, as for practice at the Bar, 
 
 Your gifts — I don’t know what they are, 
 
 But know, at least, they’re not forensic. 
 
 You might, by steady cram, aspire 
 To dodge the test of martial duty; 
 
 But you have shown no keen desire 
 To face the pom-pom’s withering fire, 
 
 And die for Haldane, Home and Beauty. 
 
 Remains the Church, where you might seek 
 A paltry income from the pew-rate ; 
 
 Yet here, again, I find you weak 
 In certain graces, such as Greek, 
 
 That go to make the perfect curate. 
 
 Still, there’s the chauff — What’s that I hear ? 
 You wish to say that, thanks to Heaven, 
 you 
 
 Have found a suitable career 
 At some ^300 a year 
 
 Drawn from a grateful country’s revenue ? 
 
 My credulous son ! Your faith would break 
 The records of the Middle Ages ! 
 
 Skilled work, and past your wits to fake, 
 
 Needs must he do who means to make 
 Six of the best in weekly wages ! 
 
A New Profession 
 
 79 
 
 What’s that ? The House intends to treat 
 Its private self to public payment ? 
 Eventually hopes to meet, 
 
 By saving money on the Fleet, 
 
 Its bills for bed and board and raiment ? 
 
 Embrace me, boy ! I felt afraid 
 
 That you would never find your mission ; 
 You knew no sort of craft or trade, 
 
 But here’s your metier ready-made ! 
 
 You shall become a Politician ! 
 
 My hopes for you, preposterous oaf, 
 
 Were ashes ; now to flame you fan ’em ; 
 
 No need to toil or spin or chauff 
 When you can comfortably loaf, 
 
 And touch £300 per annum . 
 
 Embrace your father ! You shall see 
 
 How well the prospect serves to stem his fear 
 He’ll stand his son the entrance fee, 
 
 And you shall join, a paid M.P., 
 
 The finest Club in either hemisphere. 
 
( 8o ) 
 
 ENCORE LE MONDE Otj L’ON 
 S’AFFICHE 
 
 [“Mrs. is giving a little dinner for the Countess 
 
 of ’s dance.”] 
 
 Scanning the paper with my morning coffee — 
 Such mental food as “ Bargains at the Sales,’* 
 “ Birrell’s Dilemma,” “ Eagle Choked by 
 Toffee,” 
 
 “The Quake of Earth in Gallant Little 
 Wales,” 
 
 “ The Wrongs of Suffragettes, and How to 
 Right ’em,” 
 
 “Tragedy on a Cliff — the Fatal Shove,” 
 
 I came upon the really poignant item 
 Recorded just above. 
 
 Madam, I had not guessed your social station, 
 Nor even learned your name before to-day ; 
 The loss was mine ; I suffered that privation 
 With simple fortitude as brave men may ; 
 Until your paragraph, perused this morning, 
 
 Lit up the nescient gloom in which I sat, 
 
 I had received no hint, no sort of warning, 
 
 That you would dine like that. 
 
Encore le Monde ou l’on s’affiche 8i 
 
 ’Tis not the vulgar cost of wine and victual 
 That makes, of such a meal, a world-event ; 
 The dinner, modestly described as “ little,” 
 Would not demand this bold advertisement ; 
 
 It is the sequent ball that craves recital, 
 
 The noble house to which your guests will go — 
 That is the salient matter, that the vital 
 Thing for us all to know. 
 
 And now we know it ; and to this instruction, 
 For which a grateful public thanks you much, 
 Each of us adds the obvious deduction 
 That it has cost you, say, a guinea touch. 
 
 The earthquake, and the eagle (rapta fatis) 
 Whose toffee-surfeit everyone deplores, 
 
 Get their advertisement for nothing (gratis) ; 
 
 You had to pay for yours ! 
 
 G 
 
( 82 ) 
 
 THE WEARING OF THE WHISKER 
 A Bare-Faced Retort. 
 
 [ The Lady has been informed that “ woman’s admiration 
 for the man with the clean-shaven face is waning, and that a 
 revival of the detestable moustache is imminent.” 4 * If it 
 is really true,” says The Lady , “ I hope it will not stop at 
 the moustache. Whiskers have not been worn for thirty 
 years, and they could be made quite dandified and 
 D’Orsayish if reintroduced.”] 
 
 Not for myself the horror when I hear 
 
 Of this insensate freak of mobile Fashion ; 
 
 I have been shaved, clean-shaved, this many 
 a year, 
 
 And still propose to cut the frequent gash on 
 My patient face, nor grow 
 Side trimmings or a rude moustachio. 
 
 Woman (whose tastes I never had the tongue 
 Rightly to chant, nor yet the wit to follow) 
 May choose to let her fingers sport among 
 The facial growths of some unshorn Apollo, 
 Trained like the ampelopsis, 
 
 That happy haunt of woolly bears and wopses : — 
 
 Woman, I say, her Paradise may seek 
 On downy lips ; she may elect to risk her 
 Complexion up against a hairy cheek, 
 
 Wiping its bloom away with tufts of whisker ; 
 
 And, should she so incline, 
 
 Then that is her affair and none of mine. 
 
The Wearing of the Whisker 83 
 
 My trouble is that men whom I admire, 
 
 Whose open countenances, clean as whistles, 
 
 Suggest the late Sir Joshua’s angel choir, 
 
 May join the mode and take to rearing 
 bristles, 
 
 And thus could never be 
 The same, ah ! never more the same, to me ! 
 
 If Asquith, say, were snared in Fashion’s net, 
 And (coarsely speaking) chucked the legal 
 type up, 
 
 And, to appease the ardent suffragette, 
 
 Assumed the shaggy semblance of a Skye-pup, 
 I could not well be mute, 
 
 And lightly bear to see him so hirsute. 
 
 I think the spectacle would drive me mad 
 
 Should Winston’s cherub cheeks be flanked 
 with “weepers,” 
 
 Or Birrell to his mutton cutlets add 
 
 A supplemental pair of pendent creepers, 
 
 The kind that might recall 
 Wistaria hanging from a cottage wall. 
 
 Or what if Morley fledged his lips with fluff, 
 
 To captivate some Oriental peri ! 
 
 Or Edward Grey, exchanging smooth for rough, 
 Developed droopers like my Lord Dundreary , 
 And in the dubious dark 
 Confused himself with Whiskerandos Clarke ! 
 
 g 2 
 
84 Salvage 
 
 But worst, if Haldane (hairless heretofore), 
 Assisting William to review his batteries, 
 And keen to compliment that Lord of War 
 By imitation, most sincere of flatteries, 
 Should wear, for England’s sake, 
 Moustaches of the best Imperial make ! ! 
 
( 8 5 ) 
 
 OF TAME LIONS 
 
 Verses composed on the Kalends of March. 
 
 Month of the Winds that, like the royal beast 
 When on his prey he pounces to annex it, 
 Should strictly enter raging from the East 
 And having finished make a lamb-like exit ; 
 
 Why have you not arrived in rampant mood, 
 
 As Afric’s monarch hurtles through the 
 jungle ? 
 
 Can there have been some inexactitude, 
 
 Some silly meteorologic bungle ? 
 
 We were to hide our heads from your attack, 
 But these are dulcet airs that softly stroke us, — 
 Zephyrs, not mentioned in the almanack, 
 
 Nor contemplated by the crescent crocus. 
 
 That harbinger of Spring, by lawn and glade, 
 That looked to see you in your Lion’s habit, 
 Laughs in your face and feels much less afraid 
 Than had you been a small domestic rabbit ! 
 
 What have you done to lose your strength and 
 speed ? 
 
 Have the rheumatics made your tawny flank 
 ache ? 
 
 Or was it Shrovetide’s undigested feed 
 
 That left you torpid from excess of pancake ? 
 
86 
 
 Salvage 
 
 I do suspect this last. And here I find 
 Another Lion has in you a symbol 
 
 Of its own self — I mean the British kind, 
 
 Once so superbly muscular and nimble. 
 
 He, too, has overstrained his powers inside, 
 
 And to the stomach’s wants so weakly 
 pandered 
 
 That, while elsewhere the nations filch his pride, 
 None comes, in cost of living, near his 
 standard ! 
 
 And still we raise new gastronomic shrines, 
 Making a rude embarrassment of Ritzes, 
 
 Till the dull beast, outworn with meats and wines, 
 Loses at last what poor remaining wit’s his. 
 
 Come then, O March, put on your Martial show, 
 Lest we, who have our sinews soft and flabby, 
 
 Forget how Lions look, before they grow 
 
 Sleek as their lower type, the pampered tabby. 
 
 Month of the Winds, let loose their healthy roar ! 
 Call up your tonic gales from out their cavern ! 
 
 Sting us to see that life is something more 
 Than just a round of restaurant and tavern ! 
 
( 8 7 ) 
 
 THE DECLINE OF CHIVALRY 
 
 Not of the times portrayed by Monsieur Malory, 
 When, poising high in air his barber’s pole, 
 Your lusty knight beneath the ladies’ gallery 
 Took a preliminary caracole, 
 
 Then went and got himself severely bruised 
 So as to keep the pretty dears amused ; — 
 
 Not of the period dimly pre-Quixotic 
 
 When, wearing mail for flannel next the chest, 
 Heroes half gladiatorial, half erotic, 
 
 Rode out upon the thing they called a Quest ; — 
 Not of those days I speak, for I have read 
 How that Cervantes, cynic, killed them dead. 
 
 I speak of other times and other morals, 
 An age of Tin replacing that of Steel, 
 When Chivalry declines to hunt for laurels 
 By charging ponderously, spur at heel, 
 On deeds of high emprise down Piccadilly 
 (Unless it wants to look supremely silly). 
 
 Doubtless the better sort would gladly nourish 
 Those notions which occur in Arthur’s tale ; 
 Doubtless Romance might still contrive to 
 flourish, 
 
 Changing its knightly for its Daily Mail, 
 
 If Woman would but give our modern gallant 
 A livelier chance to demonstrate their talent 
 
88 
 
 Salvage 
 
 They sigh for service ; they would gladly wrestle 
 With horrid dragons or a heathen crew; 
 
 Ride ventre-a-terre to help the weaker vessel, 
 Behaving just as Lancelot used to do ; 
 
 Only you cannot keep it up much longer 
 When once the weaker sex becomes the stronger. 
 
 With nothing left to learn (outside the nursery), 
 These types of self-contained and virile 
 strength, 
 
 Have they, I ask you — kindly take a cursory 
 Glance at their pictured shapes, three-quarters 
 length, 
 
 Exposed, for sixpence, in the social Press — 
 Have they the air of ladies in distress ? 
 
 Believe me, Woman’s skin in not so tender; 
 
 She knows, as well as you, her way about ; 
 Why offer, then, your arm as her defender 
 When she can manage nicely, thanks, without ? 
 Why sacrifice your seat in trains or pews, 
 
 When she can chuck you from it, should she 
 choose ? 
 
 And, since the creatures we were taught to 
 cherish 
 
 Cease to comply with Nature’s holy plan, 
 
 If the old Chivalry should shortly perish 
 
 Let none that finds it murdered blame the man ; 
 
 write this epitaph for its demise : 
 islied by a woman's boot (men's extra size). 
 
( 8 9 ) 
 
 A FAMOUS VICTORY 
 
 Air — The Battle of the Baltic. 
 
 [It is said that, in his first report to his august Master, 
 the Admiral of the Baltic Fleet referred to his performance 
 on the Dogger Bank as “ a serious encounter.’’] 
 
 Of the Admiral of the Tsar 
 Sing the North Sea night’s renown, 
 
 When that gallant Tartar tar 
 Toward the Dogger drifted down, 
 
 Heading cautiously and slow for the South ; 
 
 Full of thankful wonder at 
 His escape from Kattegat, 
 
 And his heart still pit-a-pat 
 In his mouth. 
 
 Cautiously he felt his way 
 Where the snares were sure to be, 
 
 Turning darkness into day 
 
 With his lights that searched the sea, 
 
 For his Teuton friends had said, “ Have a fear! 
 Where the British trawlers ride, 
 
 You are certain to collide 
 With a foe the other side 
 Of the sphere.” 
 
90 
 
 Salvage 
 
 Ay ! beneath the stars’ eclipse 
 Who could say what levin-cracks 
 Might explode from battleships 
 In the guise of simple smacks, 
 
 What infernal submarine booby-trap, 
 Masked as mackerel or as sole, 
 
 Or a porpoise on the roll, 
 
 Might contrive to blow a hole 
 In his scrap ? 
 
 Hark ! the sudden cry outrang : 
 
 Hostile trawling fleet ahead ! 
 
 And each rustic lubber sprang 
 Like a rocket from his bed, 
 
 And prepared to meet his doom, face to face ; 
 And across the dazzled night 
 They could see this dreadful sight — 
 
 Fishers by a greenish light 
 Gutting plaice ! 
 
 Then the Admiral swore an oath, 
 
 And the word went down the line, 
 
 And the captains, nothing loth, 
 
 Read the flaring battle-sign, 
 
 And they took its meaning in at a glance ; 
 
 “ Hearts of Oak! your duty’s plain ; 
 
 Lay your guns,” they cried, “ in train ; 
 
 You may never get again 
 Such a chance ! ” 
 
A Famous Victory 
 
 9i 
 
 Then the cannon belched their shot, 
 
 And the warriors grew more bold, 
 
 And the sport more fast and hot, 
 
 When they heard no thunder rolled 
 Back in answer from the dumb-stricken foe ; 
 
 Till aloud the landsmen laughed 
 As they watched the helpless craft, 
 
 Raked and riddled, fore and aft, 
 
 Blow on blow. 
 
 But at length their task was through, 
 
 And the gunners stood at ease, 
 
 And they left each shattered crew 
 To the mercy of the seas, 
 
 Where Destruction walked with Death on the 
 wave ; 
 
 And the Admiral, much impressed, 
 
 Flashed the signal : God be blest ! 
 
 Pin a medal on the breast 
 Of the brave ! 
 
 So the fight with odds was won, 
 
 And the victors went their ways, 
 
 Flushed with duty nobly done 
 
 To the glory and the praise 
 
 Of the majesty and might of the Tsar ; 
 
 Till their fame arrived, one day, 
 
 Where a British squadron lay 
 Somewhere near thy noted bay, 
 
 Trafalgar ! 
 
( 92 ) 
 
 TO A LOST BACHELOR 
 
 Thomas, my friend, we live in stirring times 
 Which to the poet make profound appeal, 
 
 And yet to-day I must direct my rhymes 
 To what concerns my more immediate weal ; 
 For I have learned but now — and oh ! the shock 
 Has made my faith in humankind miscarry — 
 That you, on whom I rested like a rock, 
 
 Thomas, that you — that you intend to marry ! 
 
 Had any other told this sorry tale 
 
 I would have thrust the libel down his throat, 
 Saying, “ His spots the leopard cannot pale, 
 
 Nor yet the iEthiop shed his native coat ! ” 
 But you yourself conveyed the damning news, 
 And, though you wore an air of wild elation, 
 Babbling a jargon such as infants use, 
 
 ’Twas clear you spoke from first-class informa- 
 tion. 
 
 Others, I own, had dashed my faith ere now, 
 But such were slackers, groggy at the knee, 
 Not built to brave the mountain’s arduous brow 
 With stalwart veterans like you and me ; 
 
 A dwindling band, we’ve been and watched them 
 wed, 
 
 And in the festal pew I still can see you 
 Wearing funereal garb, with shaking head 
 
 And lips that groaned (in Latin) “ Eheu ! 
 Eheu / / ” 
 
To a Lost Bachelor 
 
 93 
 
 You had a heart, I hoped, of sterner bent ; 
 
 Gifts of imagination kept you right ; 
 
 You would not take the primrose path’s descent, 
 So facile and so desperately trite ; 
 
 And now “ la belle dame ” holds you too in thrall, 
 You too in turn have loosely drifted from me ; 
 
 This is the most disloyal lapse of all, 
 
 And warrants my remarking “ Et tu , Tommy ! ” 
 
 Don’t tell me how our ties will just extend, 
 Not break, through such a change — I’ve 
 thought of that; — 
 
 That wives adopt their husband’s dearest friend, 
 Much like a fixture when you take a flat ; 
 
 Contrariwise I’m certain she will cast 
 A jealous eye on me ; it must upset her 
 
 To know I know so much about your past 
 
 From those nomadic days before you met her. 
 
 Therefore, my Thomas, since we two must part, 
 
 I post you, privily, these farewell lines, 
 
 Where pity more than anger moves my heart 
 On this ill-omened Eve — St. Valentine’s ; 
 
 Pity me, too, left lonely on the shore 
 
 Here where the tide below my stranded keel 
 ebbs, 
 
 The same that lifts your prow which lately bore 
 In deathless paint (you said) the sign of Coelebs . 
 
( 94 ) 
 
 ALL FOOLS’ EVE 
 
 Permit me to remind you, precious One, 
 
 That we (yourself and I) to-morrow wed ; 
 
 And let me add, I greatly hope the sun 
 
 May shower his gold upon your golden head, 
 To hint that Heaven above 
 Smiles on my happy choice of All Fools’ Day, my 
 love. 
 
 You may remember why I chose a date 
 
 For which your female heart found no 
 excuse ; 
 
 I had a human motive, dearest Kate : 
 
 My kindly object was to introduce 
 An element of mirth 
 
 Into the dullest ceremony known on earth. 
 
 For fear our friends might count the thing a 
 bore 
 
 With no redeeming hitch to raise a laugh 
 (As when the ring gets loose and takes the 
 floor), 
 
 I fixed a day that offered scope for chaff ; 
 Allusions made to folly 
 
 Might help, I thought, to mitigate their 
 melancholy. 
 
All Fools’ Eve 
 
 95 
 
 You will, of course, ignore such jenx desprit ; 
 Lightly they’ll glance from off your back, dear 
 duck. 
 
 A woman who would choose a man like me 
 Must be a connoisseur and know her luck ; 
 She’s not a fool nor blind, 
 
 But dowered with wisdom of a most unusual 
 kind. 
 
 Just so yourself, when I selected you 
 From other equally potential wives, 
 Approved my judgment, praised my point of 
 view, 
 
 Regarded my request that our two lives 
 Should be together knitted 
 As quite the soundest act I ever yet committed. 
 
 Surely there never was a pair so wise. 
 
 And when the others, in their humorous way, 
 Babble of motley as our fitting guise, 
 
 We’ll know the facts, and let them have their 
 day, 
 
 Their one day in the year, 
 
 Poor fools, who haven’t married you or me, 
 my dear. 
 
( 96 ) 
 
 TO ENGLAND IN 1908 
 
 Dedicated to the author of “ Forty Singing Seamen,” by 
 one of them. 
 
 [The following verses are modelled on the metrical 
 scheme of a poem by Mr. Alfred Noyes entitled “To 
 England in 1907 ; a Prayer that she might speak for 
 Peace.” For those (if any) who have never read this fine 
 outburst of optimism, a brief quotation may serve to 
 illustrate Mr. Noyes’s motive and method. 
 
 “ The poor and weak uplift their manacled hands 
 To thee, our Mother, our Lady and Queen of lands : 
 Anguished in prayer before thy footstool stands 
 
 Peace, with her white wings glimmering o’er the sea. 
 
 Others may shrink whose naked frontiers face 
 A million foemen of an alien race ; 
 
 But thou, Imperial, by thy pride of place 
 O, canst thou falter or fear to set them free ? 
 ****** 
 
 Speak, speak and act ! The sceptre is in thy hand ; 
 Proclaim the reign of love from land to land ; 
 
 Then come the world against thee, thou shalt stand ! 
 Speak, with the world-wide voice of thine own sea.”] 
 
 Now, England, stretch the dismal pall above 
 The dead year’s hopes of universal love 
 While to her ark returns the futile dove 
 Disconsolate o’er the grey diluvial sea. 
 
 This was that year of Conference at the Hague, 
 And the results I find extremely vague ; 
 
 Rumours of War still raven like the plague, 
 
 And still Bellona goes it strong and free. 
 
To England in 1908 
 
 97 
 
 I bade you speak for Peace, and speak you did, 
 Trying your best to do as you were bid — 
 
 Waste words as when a cuttle-fish (or squid) 
 Mottles with squirted ink the indifferent sea. 
 
 Did you not promise in the open Press 
 To build no fewer than one ship the less 
 If they, the Powers, would sign a joint address 
 Making the entrance to Millennium free ? 
 
 None with a like authority could speak. 
 
 You are an island ; you are thus unique ; 
 
 Safe as a cert behind your narrow streak 
 Consisting, all the way, of sundering sea. 
 
 Some folk have frontiers — always such a bore ; 
 
 It means a slavish lust for local gore ; 
 
 But you, with Ocean’s barrier round your shore, 
 Imbibed at birth the trick of being free. 
 
 By land, as on the brine, you take the lead ; 
 Your patriot heirs are bred of manhood’s breed, 
 Each one ( per cent.) prepared to die at need 
 Rather than lose his grip upon the sea. 
 
 Yet, England, what availed your wistful cry ? 
 Judge, if you please, by Germany’s mute reply : 
 She lays her keels regardless — we know why : — 
 To jump our claim to set the nations free. 
 
 And shall we hear that menacing voice dictate 
 Liberty’s terms within our seaward gate ? 
 
 Let nineteen-seven go ! Here ’s nineteen-eight ! 
 We’ll teach them who’s entitled to the sea ! 
 
 H 
 
9 8 
 
 Salvage 
 
 You, as I said before (and say again, 
 
 For fear the rest should fail to read it plain), 
 Have the sole right, as Mistress of the Main, 
 Will they or nill, to say they shall be free. 
 
 Enough of words. Build Dreadnoughts two to 
 one ; 
 
 And let your children, every mother’s son, 
 Shoulder the rifle, prime the rakish gun, 
 
 And fling this shattering challenge o’er the 
 sea : — 
 
 “’Tis ours to stamp the world with Freedom’s 
 brand ! 
 
 Love us, or we will blow you out of hand 
 Into a shapeless pulp. So understand, 
 
 We mean, this way or that, to make you 
 free ! ” 
 
 Thus shall the reign of Peace be shortly due, 
 Based on a general funk, superbly blue, 
 
 Or else because there ’s no one left but you 
 Upon an otherwise unpeopled sea. 
 
( 99 ) 
 
 THE TURNING OF THE MIDDLE- 
 CLASS WORM 
 
 [The “ Middle-Class Serf,” who is taxed and rated and 
 bled beyond endurance u in the interests of the most 
 pampered section of the community — the labouring man,” 
 is now, it seems, in revolt, and is forming a new political 
 body on the lines of the Labour Party in order to obtain 
 justice and recognition.] 
 
 What are these voices floating on the Springtide, 
 Blent with the clank of chains, 
 
 Poignant as when a sea-mew, with his wing tied, 
 Frets for the ocean’s plains ; 
 
 Not loud and coarse, but doleful, but adagio , 
 
 As fits Refinement, even in decay, 
 
 There in its villa aptly styled “ Bellaggio,” 
 
 Down Brixton way ? 
 
 I know that cry, that stifled cry for freedom ! 
 
 I know that weary wail ! 
 
 It is the Middle Class with none to heed ? em, 
 Except The Daily Mail ; 
 
 It is the type of whom the word was written 
 That proves the pen jnore potent than the 
 sword : 
 
 “ These constitute the heart, the brains, of 
 Britain, 
 
 Its spinal cord.” 
 
 H 2 
 
IOO 
 
 Salvage 
 
 The clerk, the journalist, the man of letters, 
 
 Of medicine and the law — 
 
 They are condemned to wear ignoble fetters, 
 And lie on planks and straw ; 
 
 Daintily bred, they have their bodies branded 
 With marks that ought to make our bosoms 
 boil ; 
 
 They are the slaves of so-called horny-handed 
 Scions of toil. 
 
 Bled (to oblige his lord) of hard-won wages, 
 
 The wretched drudge provides 
 Free schools and meals, free baths and free 
 old-ages, 
 
 And Lord knows what besides ; 
 
 Until a brain of once superb dimensions 
 At last collapses, and the poor dull slave 
 Gets, while his tyrants pouch their annual 
 pensions, 
 
 A pauper’s grave ! 
 
 England, be warned ! The time for patience 
 passes ; 
 
 You are more near the eve 
 Of a revolt among the Middle Classes 
 Than you perhaps believe ; 
 
 Worn to a thread by Labour’s licensed plunder 
 Of what poor desultory pay they earn, 
 
 Can anybody reasonably wonder 
 These worms should turn ? 
 
Turning of the Middle-Class Worm ioi 
 
 We can but dimly guess what that contortion 
 Will in effect be like, 
 
 For none has even seen the brainy portion. 
 
 Of England go on strike ; 
 
 This much is sure — or I’ve miscalculated — 
 
 It will recall Athena’s maiden role. 
 
 When she emerged, in armour fully plated, 
 From Zeus’s poll. 
 
 Figure the portent ! Let there be no blinking 
 The dread results to be 
 
 When all our Thinking Classes give up thinking 
 And strike for Liberty ! 
 
 The public might endure its straitened lot if 
 Most other hives of thought should cease to 
 hum, 
 
 But what — O hideous apprehension ! — what if 
 The Press went dumb ! 
 
( IQ 2 ) 
 
 IN PRAISE OF FOG 
 
 Mysterious instrument of urban woe, 
 
 O Fog, 
 
 Weighing on palsied London like a log, 
 
 There must be something good in you, I know, 
 Or why does everyone abuse you so ? 
 
 You veil the cheeks of beauty, that is true, 
 
 But then 
 
 You also veil some very ugly men, 
 
 And these are legion, while the fair are few, 
 
 And therefore I am much obliged to you. 
 
 Wrapt in your cloak of comfortable dark 
 Ninefold, 
 
 The Albert Effigy, all spruce with gold, 
 
 And poor Achilles, shivering in the Park, 
 
 Even at ten a.m. escape remark. 
 
 ’Tis yours to pluck the mighty from his seat. 
 Yon god, 
 
 Whose car is wont to treat me like a clod, 
 Alights on earth to trace his bus’s beat, 
 
 Not knowing Charing Cross from Regent Street. 
 
In Praise of Fog 103 
 
 Over the motor-fiend you cast your grim 
 Grey spell, 
 
 Claiming your equal right of raising hell, 
 
 Till on his own account there dawns on him 
 A sense of sanctity in life and limb. 
 
 Your trend is democratic. I have seen 
 A lord, 
 
 Driven (by you) to courses he abhorred, 
 
 Stand on the Underground, first class, between 
 Two seated segments of the Great Unclean. 
 
 Your vogue revives our Strephons’ drooping 
 lyres ; 
 
 The skies 
 
 Ring loud to Rider Haggard’s happy cries ; 
 You come to town, and lo ! the race retires 
 “ Back to the land” that reared its rustic sires. 
 
 At Christmas-tide I could not wish you hence, 
 Not I, 
 
 Who gave, in lieu of gifts I failed to buy, 
 
 This fair excuse, “ The Fog was too, too dense ! ” 
 Thank you for that. It saved me much expense. 
 
 Evgo, I cannot let my feelings chime, 
 
 O Fog, 
 
 With theirs who paint you black as Golliwog ; 
 But I shall be most pleased at any time 
 (When matter fails) to mention you in rhyme. 
 
( io 4 ) 
 
 NIGHT THOUGHTS OF AN 
 ALTRUIST 
 
 [In an article under the title “ How to go to Sleep,” Mr. 
 Eustace Miles, after touching on some of the more 
 popular physical devices for inducing slumber, recom- 
 mends that one should not allow one’s meditations to be 
 “ self-circumferenced,” but should “send out thoughts for 
 the health of others.”] 
 
 When the hours of day are ended, 
 
 And the stars are overhead, 
 
 And your figure lies extended 
 On a sanitary bed ; 
 
 When you sample all specifics 
 From the latest sleeping tract, 
 
 And the footling soporifics 
 Fail to act ; 
 
 When, to sooth the veins that beat in 
 Your ebullient head, you hold 
 (Turn and turn about) your feet in 
 Tubs of water, hot and cold ; 
 
 When you irrigate your seething 
 Temples with a garden hose, 
 
 Or adopt a rhythmic breathing 
 Through the nose ; 
 
 When you check a flock that hustles, 
 
 Sheep by sheep, across a stile, 
 
 Or relax your facial muscles 
 In a large and fatuous smile ; 
 
Night Thoughts of an Altruist 105 
 
 When you eat a raw cucumber 
 With an onion sliced in oil, 
 
 Yet no faintest sign of slumber 
 Crowns your toil ; 
 
 When you’ve run through every poem 
 Learned verbatim long ago, 
 
 And recalled, from Jeroboam, 
 
 Israel’s monarchs in a row ; 
 
 When, in fact, you’ve vainly tested 
 All the known hypnotic wiles, 
 
 Are you beaten, are you bested, 
 
 Mr. Miles ? 
 
 Do you rise in your pyjamas 
 
 (Natural wool throughout) and pore 
 Over Ibsen’s earlier dramas 
 Till you ultimately snore ? 
 
 Short of this, or Homer’s Iliad 
 In the undiluted Greek, 
 
 Have you else no balm in Gilead, 
 
 So to speak ? 
 
 Yes ! you turn your thoughts to others 
 Far beyond the selfish zone, 
 
 To a world of men and brothers 
 With digestions not your own ; 
 
 There your heart goes gently stealing 
 (That’s the true narcotic spell !) 
 
 And you trust that they are feeling 
 Pretty well. 
 
( iq 6 ) 
 
 THE CONSOLATIONS OF AGE 
 
 [Not to be confused with Old-Age Pensions.] 
 
 Yes, my Septimius, you are growing old. 
 
 Vainly you draw those lateral wisps of hair 
 Across your cranium, desolately bare, 
 
 In hope to hide the summit’s polished mould ; 
 Try as you may — and do, 
 
 Implacably the thing shows through. 
 
 Your step is heavier ; in the mazy dance 
 No more you whirl the once fantastic toe ; 
 Sudden exertion tends to make you blow, 
 
 And fewer things in life are left to chance, 
 Because your nerve resents 
 The shock of unforeseen events. 
 
 Your games are those that you would then have 
 mocked 
 
 When Youth demanded tests of pluck and 
 speed ; 
 
 You favour golf and croquet, where you need 
 Run little risk of being badly crocked ; 
 
 (Also a little chess 
 Causes your body no distress). 
 
The Consolations of Age 107 
 
 Spring, which is apt to urge the pulse’s pace, 
 Merely evokes regret for springs gone by ; 
 
 No longer now your vague and virile eye 
 Laughs back at Beauty’s challenge to the chase ; 
 Women indeed, as such, 
 
 Have ceased to move you overmuch. 
 
 These are the penalties that Age involves. 
 
 Yet are there compensations — of a kind — 
 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind, 
 
 That teach perspective, give the sense that 
 solves 
 
 What is of worth, and what, 
 
 Upon the other hand, is not. 
 
 Those passions cooled that made your judgment 
 swerve, 
 
 You’ll read the merits clear of man and man, 
 And know a patriot from a partisan, 
 
 Men such as Milner from the race they serve — 
 The graceless sort that mix 
 Their gratitude with mud and bricks. 
 
 And you will die, I hope, before the day 
 When none is left to take his country’s part 
 Because she’s broken every loyal heart 
 And killed her own by adipose decay. 
 
 May timely death, my friend, 
 
 Spare you the sight of such an end ! 
 
( 108 ) 
 
 “HOME THOUGHTS FROM 
 ABROAD ” 
 
 “ O to be in England ! ” &c. 
 
 I. 
 
 When balm of Spring had turned the poet’s 
 head, 
 
 And he expressed a pious wish to share 
 The vernal joys of England (so he said, 
 
 Having a patriot’s heart, but took good care 
 To live elsewhere), 
 
 I hope he meant it ; I sincerely trust 
 That he was forced to let his feelings go 
 As poets do who sing because they must. 
 
 But did he ? I should greatly like to know 
 If this was so. 
 
 Here was his chosen home, this land of flowers ; 
 He knew her for the loveliest haunt of 
 Spring ; 
 
 He knew her vocal groves, her cypress bowers, 
 How they could teach our wisest thrush a 
 thing, 
 
 Or two, to sing. 
 
“ Home Thoughts from Abroad” 109 
 
 Here, well he knew it, with the breath of 
 March, 
 
 Young Spring, the Florentine, already stirred, 
 Nor waited, under Italy’s azure arch, 
 
 Until the swallow, that fastidious bird, 
 
 Had twice occurred. 
 
 Still, Browning’s verse is his affair. For me 
 Viewing, on Samminiato’s heights reclined, 
 This city made for Nature’s pageantry, 
 
 I own I bear my exile with a mind 
 Sweetly resigned. 
 
 Threading the dusky hills that ring her round, 
 Where like a central gem Firenze lies, 
 
 Green Arno westering goes through storied 
 ground 
 
 To catch their colour from the burnished skies 
 When the day dies. 
 
 Ah well ! ’Tis hard to be from home just 
 now ; 
 
 Yet, while these airs of evening, soft and 
 faint, 
 
 Temper the keen nostalgia in my brow, 
 
 I must endure it like a local saint 
 Without complaint. 
 
 Florence . 
 
no 
 
 Salvage 
 
 II. 
 
 Beneath a noon athirst to spend 
 The night’s largesse of healing dew, 
 
 Russet and grey the rocks descend 
 Sheer to the sudden shoreless blue ; 
 
 Blossom of almond, bloom of peach, 
 
 From crannied ledges lean their banners, 
 
 And Nature, far as eye can reach, 
 
 Adopts the most engaging manners. 
 
 Here, closely linked, the dancing hours 
 Renew the one unwearying strain ; 
 
 Each season flaunts her spoil of flowers 
 Moving with jocund steps and fain ; 
 
 And Winter’s self, the mate of Spring, 
 Checks not the feet that follow after ; 
 
 And April weaves her daedal ring 
 
 With never a tear to dim the laughter. 
 
 Man, too, where other prospects please, 
 
 Is not, as usual, simply vile ; 
 
 His lesson learnt at Nature’s knees, 
 
 He wears an entente cor diale smile ; 
 
 I hear his happy, reckless hoot, 
 
 I breathe his generous pungent odours, 
 
 Where all the lower Corniche Route 
 
 Resounds with Anglo-French exploders.* 
 
 * By Tre, Pol, and Pen 
 
 Ye may know the Cornish men . — Old Song . 
 
 By Teuf, Hoot and Toot 
 
 Ye may know the Corniche Route . — New Song. 
 
“Home Thoughts from Abroad” hi 
 
 Why, then, should I desert a spot 
 
 That makes my vagrant waistcoat thrill, 
 Prompting the rhymes I loosely dot 
 Down on my local washing-bill ? 
 
 Why quit a world whose beauty wakes 
 The lyre of middle-aged Apollos, 
 
 And seek a dubious clime that breaks 
 The back of disillusioned swallows ? 
 
 Is it because the poet’s words 
 Extol the charm of British Springs 
 That I, with those misguided birds, 
 
 Propose to fare on northward wings ? 
 
 Is it because my spirit pines 
 
 For London’s over-rated season ? 
 
 No, it is not. The following lines 
 Confess a larger, loftier reason. 
 
 There is a moment (just behind 
 The vernal equinox it falls) 
 
 When men of patriotic mind 
 
 Are ware of England’s voice that calls ! 
 
 At once, from bower or bath or bed 
 
 (No cost so great the heart would grudge it) 
 They fly, like me, to hold her head, 
 
 And help to see her through the Budget ! 
 
 Cap d’Ail. 
 
THE SOURCE OF ENGLAND’S 
 GREATNESS 
 
 When from distant parts returning, 
 
 Dazed with foreign modes of talk, 
 
 And the heart within him yearning 
 Towards his home’s fagade of chalk — 
 When at length his eye has lit on 
 Dover’s mole that mocks the tide 
 What is it that stirs the Briton 
 With a throb of native pride, 
 Counteracting other spasms in the pit of his 
 inside ? 
 
 Does he muse : “ I come from places 
 Pitifully far behind 
 Us in all the arts and graces, 
 
 Love of culture, breadth of mind ? 
 
 Paris, Seville, Munich, Naples — 
 
 Can their gifts with ours compare ? 
 
 What have they to match with Maple’s, 
 
 Or the Halls of Leicester Square, 
 
 Or the verve of Carlton dinners when Ideas are 
 in the air ? ” 
 
 No, he grants we may be duller 
 Than the centres I have named, 
 
The Source of England’s Greatness 113 
 
 Deaf to music, blind to colour, 
 
 Bare of art and unashamed ; 
 
 Jenx d' esprit — we may have missed ’em, 
 
 And our play of wit be slow, 
 
 Yet he finds no second system 
 Whose affairs so smoothly flow 
 Undisturbed by those who reckon they are there 
 to run the show. 
 
 Other lands that view their Senates 
 As the fount of social law 
 May on their paternal tenets 
 Hang with unaffected awe ; 
 
 We regard our Chambers’ prattle 
 As of negligible weight, 
 
 Like the wind of schoolboy battle 
 In a boarding-house debate, 
 
 Full of noise but pretty certain not to compromise 
 the State. 
 
 Here they fight, by party faction 
 Torn in two or even more, 
 
 Ever seeking new distraction 
 In the strokes they dealt before ; 
 
 While the nation, doing nicely, 
 
 Goes the way it always went, 
 
 Getting through its work precisely 
 As it would in the event 
 Of an aposiopesis overtaking Parliament. 
 
 1 
 
Salvage 
 
 i 14 
 
 That is why the homing trotter, 
 
 Pendent o’er the steamer’s side, 
 
 Feels his British heart grow hotter 
 With a sense of native pride ; 
 
 Out of lands whose rulers lead ’em 
 By a tutelary string 
 He has come where ample Freedom 
 Soars at large with lusty wing, 
 
 And the voice of politicians is a very little thing. 
 
( H5 ) 
 
 THE SECRET OF SANITY 
 
 [Lord Rosebery attributes the growth of insanity to 
 the restlessness of modern life, and advocates as a remedy 
 the cultivation of home and the domestic joys. In the 
 following verses he is supposed to be addressed by one of 
 his peers — a millionaire. ] 
 
 My lord, you lately let us know 
 That British wits are on the wane, 
 Hinting at reasons why we grow 
 Each decade more and more insane ; 
 
 And I have thought you might 
 Be glad to know that you have got the answer 
 right. 
 
 The cause, in fact, is vague unrest, 
 
 The constant itch for change of air, 
 
 The pitifully feverish quest 
 
 Of things that are not here, but there, 
 The quaint, the quite absurd 
 Passion, on everybody’s part, to be a bird. 
 
 And you, my lord, have rightly shown 
 (Speaking, as usual, like a book) 
 
 How, if we never quit our own 
 Peculiar hearth or ingle-nook, 
 
 This habit does a lot 
 
 Toward minimising any risk of mental rot. 
 
 I 2 
 
n6 
 
 Salvage 
 
 That is your rule, and that is mine ; 
 
 We both have learned the simple life; 
 
 On principle we both decline 
 The noisy stir of modern strife ; 
 
 No man could point to us 
 As tearing round upon a motor-bike or -bus ! 
 
 Prizes to which those others press 
 Whose ruder minds prefer to mix 
 In roaring commerce or the stress 
 Of vulgar party politics — 
 
 We two can well afford 
 
 To be content without them, can we not, my 
 lord ? 
 
 The gifts bestowed by Fortune’s hand, 
 
 Such as they are, for us suffice ; 
 
 We do not course by sea and land 
 Nosing each new exotic spice; 
 
 We do not need to roam ; 
 
 We merely move about from home to happy 
 home. 
 
 A modest house in Grosvenor Place, 
 
 A park, a moor, a hunting-box, 
 
 Some decent villas, say a brace, 
 
 By Monte’s blue, on Capri’s rocks — 
 With these for homely haunts, 
 
 I, like yourself, revolt from jumpy outside 
 jaunts. 
 
The Secret of Sanity 
 
 117 
 
 Yes, you and I, my lord, have found 
 The golden key to perfect calm, 
 
 And, while the Race gets over-wound 
 For want of this domestic balm, 
 
 Our nerves are never racked ; 
 
 We still contrive to keep our temperate brains 
 intact. 
 
( ”8 ) 
 
 THE HIGHER KIND OF POET 
 
 [Lines written on the occasion of a lecture by Mr. Alfred 
 Austin on *‘The Growing Distaste on the part of the 
 Many for the Higher Kinds of Poetry.” It was delivered 
 during the craze for hunting hidden treasures. The Poet 
 Laureate speaks.] 
 
 The laws that treat of rights and wrongs 
 I care not greatly who composes ; 
 
 Let me construct the nation’s songs, 
 
 And someone else may be her Moses — 
 
 So (roughly) ran the immortal phrase, 
 
 But though I can’t recall who said it 
 Full well I know that nowadays 
 
 He wouldn’t earn the faintest credit. 
 
 How sadly changed the prospect seems 
 From what beguiled my early summers, 
 Passed in the haunt of poets’ dreams, 
 
 The breeding hive of brainy hummers !* 
 
 O age of unrecorded feats ! 
 
 How fair the hopes our boyhood built on 
 Who meant in time to coo like Keats, 
 
 Or have an organ-mouth like Milton ! 
 
 *“ What is more gentle than a wind in summer ? 
 
 What is more soothing than the pretty hummer 
 
 That stays one moment in an open flower 
 
 And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower ? ’ * — Keats. 
 
The Higher Kind of Poet 119 
 
 What bard has ever rightly sung 
 
 The thoughts that made our bosoms swell up, 
 When not the biceps, but the lung 
 Was what we panted to develop ? 
 
 When, careless though our fame was mute 
 Upon the school’s athletic panels, 
 
 We let our swift ambitions shoot 
 Down purely literary channels ? 
 
 Spurning the rude barbarian sport 
 
 That makes the modern youth’s diversion, 
 
 We found our leisure all too short 
 
 For Wordsworth’s nobly planned Excursion ; 
 Avoiding scenes of vulgar mirth, 
 
 We trod the track of GoneriVs treasons, 
 
 We dived with Dante under earth, 
 
 We strolled with Thomson round The Seasons . 
 
 So, when I reached a riper age, 
 
 And recognised my vocal mission, 
 
 And found my glorious heritage 
 
 Wrapped up with England’s best tradition, 
 
 I had a passion all along, 
 
 Deep in my inmost vitals rooted, 
 
 To keep intact the well of song 
 Which Chaucer left us unpolluted. 
 
 Speechless at times, through want of thought, 
 
 I burned the dim nocturnal taper ; 
 
 At times my brain was overwrought 
 With serving on a daily paper ; 
 
120 
 
 Salvage 
 
 But oft I soared with Shelley’s lark 
 Through the adjacent empyrean, 
 
 And spent the day till after dark 
 Emitting one continuous paean. 
 
 Vain, vain employ ! The common ruck, 
 
 That raves of Ranji, Tich, or Vardon, 
 
 How could it have the taste to pluck 
 
 The precious blooms that prank my garden ? 
 What hope for horny-handed churls 
 That seem to take a wanton pleasure 
 In overlooking obvious pearls, 
 
 While hunting discs of dubious “ treasure” ? 
 
 Not for myself I mourn so much, 
 
 For though my private larynx varies 
 I joy to keep in constant touch 
 With England’s roll of pure canaries ; 
 
 That legacy, the “ Higher Kind ” 
 
 To which a Laureate owes his billet — 
 Though lavished on the deaf and blind, 
 
 No mere neglect can wholly kill it ! 
 
 Yet I am something more than bird, 
 
 I am the nation’s seer and mystic, 
 
 Ordained to lift the humble herd 
 By efforts largely altruistic ; 
 
 And if I cannot move the mob 
 
 And leave them rather less benighted 
 Why, then I score a futile blob, 
 
 And must regard my life as blighted. 
 
( 121 ) 
 
 PEERS v. PEOPLE 
 
 Being a fresh example of the old contest between Ignorance 
 (Peers) and Culture (People) ; between the Powers of 
 Darkness and the Powers of Light. 
 
 [“Dr. Macnamara, M.P., wished to go to the country 
 to see whether a couple of hundred of very narrow-minded 
 and rather ignorant and entirely antediluvian country 
 gentlemen, and two dozen bishops, who managed to gather 
 up a very large measure of worldly cunning in an odour of 
 sanctified simplicity, were to stand in the way of the 
 expressed wish of the people .” — Press report of meeting of 
 the National Liberal Federation.'] 
 
 My lords, can you have pondered deep enough 
 What you are in for, you who rashly pit 
 Those brains composed of agricultural stuff 
 Against the Proletariat’s urban wit ? 
 
 Matching your rustic voice 
 With the Elect, the Sacred People’s Choice ? 
 
 Vainly the Titans thought to try their skill 
 (Antediluvian bumpkins !) on the gods, 
 
 And vainly you defy the People’s Will, 
 
 Plunging against incalculable odds ; 
 
 That Will, whose changeless laws 
 Stand rigid — like a pendulum at pause. 
 
 You of the narrow mind — no scholars you, 
 
 But rather ignorant Etonian boors — 
 
122 
 
 Salvage 
 
 And these your Bishops — such a worldly crew, 
 Doves with the serpent’s cunning in their 
 lures — 
 
 How dare you thus oppose 
 The pious savants whom the People chose ? 
 
 My lords, I note your independent air 
 
 Of men with none to say them Yea or Nay, 
 Since no elector’s favour sent you there, 
 
 And no man’s whim can pluck you thence 
 
 away ; 
 
 Nothing to gain or lose ! 
 
 This makes you sadly prone to honest views. 
 
 A fatal habit ; and I’m sore afraid 
 ’Twill be your ruin, if you still rebel 
 Against the People’s verdict as conveyed 
 By the Anointed Choice of Camberwell ! 
 
 For O, you really are a 
 Dreadful offence to Mr. Macnamara ! 
 
( 123 ) 
 
 PILOTS THAT WANT DROPPING 
 
 Air — Ye Mariners of England. 
 
 Ye mariners of Europe, 
 
 Who run our English seas, 
 
 And pouch, beneath the Union Jack, 
 
 Our native pilots’ fees, 
 
 Under what flag do you propose 
 To play the warrior tar, 
 
 When the foe wants to know 
 The trick of channel and bar, 
 
 When the slim torpedo-craft steal up 
 Over the harbour-bar. 
 
 Dumped out of various countries 
 Contiguous with the brine, 
 
 ’Tis nought to you what noble names 
 Have led our battle-line ; 
 
 Why should you care how Nelson fell 
 In the triumph of Trafalgar — 
 
 When the night shrouds from sight 
 Channel and buoy and bar, 
 
 When the slim torpedo-craft steal up 
 Over the harbour-bar ? 
 
 Wherever Mr. Bull works, 
 
 In bank or shop or mart, 
 
 You aliens enter in and learn 
 His business by the chart ; 
 
124 
 
 Salvage 
 
 So here he trains you up to be 
 His rivals’ guiding star 
 When they creep, while we sleep, 
 
 By channel and buoy and bar, 
 
 When the slim torpedo-craft steal up 
 Over the harbour-bar. 
 
 To you who share our seaways 
 On every ebb and flood 
 The bond of British comradeship 
 Is not the bond of blood ; 
 
 Nature, more close than foster-ties, 
 
 Would prove what race ye are, 
 
 When the keel of kindred steel 
 Slides in by channel and bar, 
 
 When the slim torpedo-craft steal up 
 Over the harbour-bar. 
 
 We spare, transpontius pilot, 
 
 To write you down a spy, 
 
 And yet — you scarce could change your heart 
 Then when you changed your sky ; 
 
 And, since we fain would keep our ships 
 Intact of bolt and spar, 
 
 You must go, ere the foe 
 Slips in by channel and bar, 
 
 Ere the slim torpedo-craft steal up 
 Over the harbour-bar. 
 
( 125 ) 
 
 TO A TOAST-MASTER 
 
 Preposterous relic of a golden day 
 
 When living programmes, bellowing all they 
 knew, 
 
 Announced a knighthood fretful for the fray, 
 
 So that the ring might gather who was who — 
 Which habit yet persists 
 In you, the herald of the after-dinner lists ; — 
 
 How I abhor you, posed behind the Chair, 
 
 A self-appointed patron of the feast, 
 
 Much as a rooster stands, with pompous air, 
 Upon his midden and acclaims the East ; 
 How I abhor to hear 
 
 Your throaty tones, intolerable chanticleer ; 
 
 Your unctuous tongue, the haunt of turtle fat, 
 Mouthing the qualities of Duke and Lord, 
 And your “ Pray silence for Sir This or That,” 
 Which cuts the stillness like a rusty sword, 
 And makes the wretched Bart 
 Mislay the opening pleasantry he had by heart. 
 
 Perchance I rise to pledge the Flag, and then 
 You interrupt me, just about to sip, 
 
 With your absurd “ My Lords and Gentlemen, 
 The toast is 4 Greater Britain.’ Hip ! Hip ! ! 
 Hip ! ! ! ” 
 
 Which always puts me off 
 So that I have no stomach left to cheer or quaff. 
 
126 
 
 Salvage 
 
 At times I feel that I could kill you dead. 
 
 I find my fingers toying with a knife. 
 
 Then suddenly there courses through my head 
 A wave of pity — Heavens, what a life ! 
 
 And I become quite sorry 
 For one who suffers such a deal of oratory. 
 
 If I can hardly bear it who attend 
 
 These public orgies once or twice per ann ., 
 What must it be for you who, years on end, 
 Endure the strain (I marvel how you can !) 
 
 Of night-by-night discourses 
 Touching the merits of our Military Forces ? 
 
 Maybe your manner, masterful and loud, 
 
 Is meant to hide a heart reduced to stone ; 
 Maybe your starchy front is but a shroud 
 
 For something tragic, if the truth were known ; 
 A kind of hollow crater 
 
 With cold remains of what was once a human 
 waiter. 
 
 So in my finger-glass I weep by stealth, 
 
 Musing upon the irony of Fate, 
 
 That you, who call the toast of others’ health, 
 Should be yourself in such a morbid state — 
 Your breast, once warm inside, 
 
 Now, through incessant speeches, badly petrified. 
 
( 127 ) 
 
 THOUGHTS ON A “ SEASONABLE ’ 
 CHRISTMAS 
 
 There was a period, back some decades three, 
 While yet I had the makings of a hero, 
 When I would crew for very mirth to see 
 The glass descend below the line of zero ; 
 When, to the gale impervious, I would go 
 Steel-shod across the ringing plains of ice, 
 Fretting their polish (purposely or no) 
 
 With many a quaint device. 
 
 ’Tis otherwise to-day ; this bitter snap 
 Threatens to petrify my skating muscles, 
 
 To parch my humours, corrugate my sap, 
 
 And cause a poverty of red corpuscles ; 
 Torpid with cold, my veins no longer hum 
 Ecstatically with the coursing blood, 
 
 And, if I fell, I know that I should come 
 A most infernal thud. 
 
 Bucolic sportsmen, such as have a hide 
 Of the consistency of rhino leather, 
 
 Or he that wears a nose already dyed 
 
 May wallow in this “ seasonable ” weather ; 
 Young people may allege it makes them fit, 
 And cheery elders say, “ It might be worse ; 
 I’m neither young, nor cheery, so I sit 
 Inside my grate and curse. 
 
128 
 
 Salvage 
 
 Mind you, I’m not a grumbler ; I respect 
 (Broadly) the rules of Nature and of Reason ; 
 
 I hope I should, on principle, reject 
 
 A dish of strawberries gathered out of season ; 
 And, if I overheard the cuckoo’s sign 
 Uttered, in error, on a winter’s day, 
 
 I should pretend I hadn’t, and decline 
 To give the bird away. 
 
 I am not exigent, nor claim to bask 
 Just now in punts at Maidenhead or Marlow; 
 But is there not some happy mean ? I ask ; 
 
 Must I be forced to fly to Monte Carlo ? 
 
 Must I, against my will, be driven to roam 
 In that lone alien clime, who might have done 
 My honest toil contentedly at home 
 At 40° in the sun ? 
 
( I2 9 ) 
 
 ENGLAND EXPECTS? 
 
 Reflections on the Nelson Centenary 
 
 If earthward you could wing your flight 
 And look on London’s central zone, 
 
 Seizing that eligible site 
 
 Where stands your counterfeit in stone, 
 
 I wonder, Nelson, if your eye 
 
 Would even form the faintest image 
 Of what emotions underlie 
 This tumult, this stupendous scrimmage. 
 
 Could you desert that heavenly place 
 Where sailors know their pilot-star 
 To view the many-peopled space 
 Named by the name of Trafalgar, 
 Remembering how your signal ran, 
 
 That still remains a thing of beauty, 
 
 You might expect that every man 
 This day, as then, would do his duty. 
 
 Alas ! we have no ships afloat 
 Upon the basins in the Square ; 
 
 It is the landsman’s lusty throat 
 That rends to-day a saltless air ; 
 
 And, save from such as hold the main 
 To guard her pride among the nations, 
 England has ceased to entertain 
 Much in the way of expectations. 
 
 K 
 
i3° 
 
 Salvage 
 
 O yes, they’ll shout all right enough ! 
 
 It costs them little ; noise is cheap ; 
 
 But have they hearts of quite the stuff 
 That made your loyal pulses leap ? 
 
 They’ll roar you till their midriffs ache 
 Under the bunting’s brave devices, 
 
 But wouldn’t lift a hand to make 
 The least of all your sacrifices. 
 
 A wind of words — and nothing more ! 
 
 But if the test were sought in deeds, 
 
 If England asked the sons she bore 
 Each man to serve the Mother’s needs, 
 
 If she “ expected ” such a debt 
 
 To stir the blood of those that owe it, 
 
 The sole response she’s like to get 
 
 Would be, “ No thanks ; not if we know it.” 
 
 Just now they pipe a patriot tune ; 
 
 Anon they’ll wonder why they spent 
 A precious football afternoon 
 Mafficking round a monument ; 
 
 And myriads who go mad to-day — 
 
 Give them a week, they’ll go yet madder, 
 Watching the modern heroes’ fray, 
 
 Where hirelings hoof a bounding bladder. 
 
 Much you would have to marvel at 
 Could you return this autumn-tide ; 
 
 You’d find the Fleet — thank God for that — 
 Staunch and alert as when you died ; 
 
England Expects 
 
 I 3 I 
 
 But, elsewhere, few to play your part, 
 
 Ready at need and ripe for action ; 
 
 The rest — in idle ease of heart 
 Smiling an unctuous satisfaction. 
 
 I doubt if you could well endure 
 
 These new ideals (so changed we are) 
 
 Undreamed, Horatio, in your 
 Philosophy of Trafalgar; 
 
 And, should you still “ expect ” to see 
 The standard reached which you erected, 
 
 Nothing just now would seem to be 
 So certain as the unexpected. 
 
 K 2 
 
( 13 * ) 
 
 THE NATION’S SONGS 
 
 [From a Press interview with an expert we learn that 
 before the end of October it is decided, after severe tests, 
 what songs are most likely to command popularity in the 
 Christmas pantomimes. From specimens of those that in 
 1907 were considered practically certain to secure a succes 
 fou , one may cull the following jeu d’ esprit in the philo- 
 sophic vein : — 
 
 “We all came in the world with nothing — no clothes to 
 wear ; 
 
 When we die, just bear in mind, all our money we shall 
 leave behind. 
 
 Finish up ! Just the same as we began, without the 
 slightest doubt. 
 
 We all came in the world with nothing — 
 
 And we can’t take anything out.”] 
 
 If in my heart, that is not dead but slumbers, 
 
 I dream remembrance of a youth well spent, 
 And, stirred by threats of coloured Christmas 
 “ numbers ” 
 
 (Due with the falling leaf), from far I scent 
 That time of hallowed joy, 
 
 With feelings more appropriate to a boy ; 
 
 If, in my passion for the genial season, 
 
 So strangely redolent of syne (auld lang), 
 
 I deprecate, as tantamount to treason, 
 
 The conduct of the cynic bard who sang : 
 
 “ Christmas, I’m told, is near ” ; 
 
 Adding, “ Bear up ! it comes but once a 
 year ; ” 
 
The Nation’s Songs 
 
 z 33 
 
 ’Tis not, as you will readily imagine, 
 
 That I, by rude dyspepsia rendered wise, 
 
 Am deadly keen, as once I was, to cadge in 
 The larder-cupboard after Christmas pies, 
 
 Or stretch my tumid jowl 
 With stuffing taken from the turkey-fowl ; 
 
 ’Tis not that I have failed to see the folly 
 Of mimic battles fought with melting snow ; 
 
 Not that I care, on principle, for holly, 
 
 Or have a morbid taste for mistletoe ; 
 
 Or feel profound delight 
 To hear A Christmas Carol read at night ; 
 
 Not that I yearn to quaff the wassail flagon, 
 
 Or suffer tedious after-dinner toasts, 
 
 Or filch the fiery raisin from the dragon, 
 
 Or wear a counterpane and play at ghosts, 
 
 Or sing some rotten glee 
 (Bridge being always good enough for me). 
 
 No ! what intrigues me in our Christmas festas , 
 And has attractions which can never die, 
 
 Renewed with living flame like virgin Vesta’s — 
 It is the Muse whose thoughts do often lie 
 Almost too deep for rhyme ; 
 
 I mean the sacred Muse of Pantomime. 
 
 Think you the bloom of Lyric Verse is blighted 
 That it remains a drug upon the mart ? 
 
I 34 
 
 Salvage 
 
 Look at my preface ; see the lines I’ve cited ; 
 And little will you wonder how a heart 
 Even as old as mine 
 
 Can warm itself before that spark divine ! 
 
 Ah, yes, when Noel’s other orgies tire me, 
 
 When hunt-the-slipper irks and mince-pies 
 pall, 
 
 The Songs of Pantomime can still inspire me 
 With the old rapture never past recall, 
 
 While I have strength to sit 
 And worship at the shrine of English wit. 
 
( 135 ) 
 
 CHILDE BIRRELL TO THE DARK 
 TOWER CAME 
 
 “ Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set 
 And blew ‘ Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.' ” 
 
 [“ No pulse of real life runs through the place (Dublin 
 Castle). The main current of Irish life as it rushes past 
 its walls passes by almost unheeded.” — Mr. Birrell , intro- 
 ducing his Irish Council Bill . ] 
 
 Grim stand its walls, as in a ghoulish dream, 
 Frowning above the pearly waves of Liffey ; 
 Its attitude toward that historic stream 
 Remains deplorably aloof and sniffy ; 
 
 “ Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,” 
 
 Out of the swim of Dublin’s sons and daughters, 
 Seldom or never do its minions go 
 And plunge their hide-bound bodies in the flow 
 Of those pellucid waters. 
 
 The River, too, of Life rolls by outside, 
 
 And none within takes notice. Drear and 
 heavy, 
 
 The dungeon’s portals bar that human tide 
 Save when the leading Ogre holds a levee ; 
 
 In vain her passion Erin’s bards rehearse ; 
 
 So cold the Castle’s heart, so thick its skull is, 
 That never yet one line of local verse 
 Voicing the national despair in Erse 
 Has dodged its dour portcullis. 
 
136 Salvage 
 
 When shrewd shillelaghs, hurtling through the 
 air, 
 
 Carpet the green with wigs and facial peelings, 
 Where are the Castle’s men ? They have no 
 share 
 
 In sports that vent the nation’s holiest feelings; 
 They never know the pure moonlighter’s thrill 
 When pruning cows’-tails through the long 
 night-watches ; 
 
 Nor wake a corpse around the illicit still, 
 
 But keep apart, unsociable and chill, 
 
 Imbibing alien Scotches. 
 
 Ah ! when will some great strenuous soul up- 
 spring, 
 
 Some moral Sandow with a sacred mission 
 To storm the Castle’s walls, and turn the thing 
 Into a Pan-Hibernian Exhibition ? 
 
 For he, the last to fare on that crusade — 
 
 A frivolous gay knight and fresh-recruited — 
 Having arrived and whispered “ Who’s afraid ? ” 
 Just set the slug-horn to his lips and played 
 66 Childe BivvelVs come ” — and scooted ! 
 
( *37 ) 
 
 A SECRET COMMISSION 
 
 [As far as the author can make out the facts, Augustus, 
 affianced to Amelia, has been instructed by her to pur- 
 chase some gloves in the West End and forward them to 
 her country address. A secret commission is given to 
 him by a representative of the vendors, but he at once 
 returns it. 
 
 Note . — By an Act which came into operation on 
 January i, 1907, the acceptance of secret commissions 
 constitutes an offence against the law of the land. ] 
 
 Enclosed, Amelia, you will find the gloves, 
 
 Three pairs, as ordered — suede, and long and 
 fine, 
 
 And of a hue to match the turtle-dove’s, 
 
 That bird that stands for fond affection’s sign ; 
 Also, my conscience being very nice, 
 
 I’d have my lady know exactly what 
 Secret commission on the market price 
 Her true Augustus got. 
 
 For she that o’er the counter served and sold 
 Had beauty — not of your heart-breaking kind, 
 But more anaemic, of a frailer mould, 
 
 And (need I say, Amelia ?) less refined ; 
 
 And as I sat a-sampling gloves, and deemed 
 That none was good enough to meet the case, 
 The shop-handmaiden looked at me and beamed, 
 Beamed all across her face ! 
 
Salvage 
 
 138 
 
 I gave no provocation, I will swear. 
 
 The initiative was hers and hers alone ; 
 
 She must have noticed my connubial air 
 And claimed the sex’s triumph as her own ; 
 Anyhow, there before me smiled the girl, 
 
 And O Amelia, count it not for sin 
 That blushfully I let my features curl 
 In a slow fatuous grin. 
 
 This trivial detail I should not narrate — 
 
 Plainly a reflex action, pure of guile — 
 
 Only that I discovered too, too late 
 
 Your aunt was there and watching all the while ; 
 Therefore I think it best that you should glean 
 The truth from me, nor let your judgment err, 
 Tricked by a lurid version of the scene 
 As it appealed to her. 
 
 I trust my story (now you have it right) 
 
 May heal between our hearts the threatened 
 breach ; 
 
 Clean is the breast I make ; O clasp it tight 
 When next I bring it round within your reach ! 
 I took the veiled commission — that is true ; 
 
 I had a moment’s softening of the brain ; 
 
 And then I thought of Honour and of You, 
 
 And gave it back again ! 
 
( 139 ) 
 
 THE PEOPLE’S SPORT 
 
 “ Ludum insolentem ludere pertinax.” 
 
 [There seems to be a great opening for a new daily 
 paper which will refuse to report professional football.] 
 
 That man has surely something wrong inside — 
 A fractious liver or a frigid heart — 
 
 Who in the people’s pleasure takes no pride, 
 
 But stands in lofty attitudes apart, 
 
 Quite unimpressed 
 
 By what immediately concerns the general breast. 
 
 Myself, whenever, walking down the street, 
 
 I ask what moves him most, the Man therein, 
 I feel my pulses bounding, beat for beat, 
 
 In strictest time with those that toil and spin ; 
 I could not bear 
 
 To think that in their joys and griefs I had no 
 share. 
 
 On opening nights, among the gallery-folk, 
 
 I like to echo every thrill and throb, 
 
 To laugh in tune with such as see a joke 
 
 And souse my handkerchief with such as sob ; 
 And, when it’s through, 
 
 Rise up in god-like wrath and boo with those 
 that boo. 
 
140 
 
 Salvage 
 
 And, less from economic motives than 
 
 Because my heart goes out to all that mete 
 Strong wine of words to melt the Average Man, 
 Being themselves a sort of plebiscite , 
 
 Over my mess 
 
 Of matin porridge, I peruse the |d. Press. 
 
 But there are limits. I have bravely borne 
 The shock of cricket jargon, reams on reams, 
 That spoilt with punctual blast each summer 
 morn, 
 
 And now — how petty that infliction seems 
 Compared with these 
 
 Five serried columns stuffed with football 
 pleasantries. 
 
 Yet in a hundred scenes, all much the same, 
 
 I know that weekly half a million men 
 (Who never actually played the game), 
 
 Hustling like cattle herded in a pen, 
 
 Look on and shout 
 
 While two-and-twenty hirelings hack a ball 
 about. 
 
 I know it ; yet I hardly care at all 
 
 Whether the Wolves break up the Throstles’ 
 wings, 
 
 Or Sheffield Friday gives the Saints a fall, 
 
 Or Pompey round the Reds is making rings, 
 Or in the Spurs, 
 
 Once firmly fixed in front, a falling-off occurs. 
 
The People’s Sport 
 
 I 4 I 
 
 Against my Chronicle I bring no charge ; 
 
 It but reflects the Proletariat’s views, 
 
 And I must either mentally enlarge, 
 
 Or float a nobler brand of Daily News , 
 
 And bar its page 
 
 To soccer as the social curse that blights the 
 Age. 
 
( 142 ) 
 
 GAMES AND THE MAN 
 
 [“Sport,” according to Mr. Cunninghame Graham, 
 “ has often been defended as being the image of war, and 
 as tending to render those who engage in it manly and 
 warlike. . . . But there are the Japanese, none of whom 
 are sportsmen, for one can hardly class their fishing (after 
 a battle) in the category of sport. ... Is any nation of 
 sportsmen more brave or more warlike ? ”] 
 
 O for the faiths of long ago 
 
 On which our fancy loved to lean, 
 
 When naked Truth was still to know, 
 
 And we were young and very green ; 
 
 Now are they mostly hollow myths, 
 
 Like to the “ king y-crowned in Fairy,” 
 
 Or those high gods in Dr. Smith’s 
 Inimitable Dictionary. 
 
 To history’s radium, piercing through, 
 Reluctantly each legend yields — 
 
 Witness the tale of Waterloo 
 As won on Eton’s playing fields ; 
 
 Its authorship is not in doubt ; 
 
 The Duke unquestionably said it ; 
 
 Only, the facts therein set out 
 
 Are deemed no longer worthy credit. 
 
 We nursed, till now, the cherished creed 
 
 That none could cope with sword and flames, 
 Or do a dashing warrior-deed, 
 
 Save he excelled in “ manly games ” ; 
 
Games and the Man 
 
 I 43 
 
 Games were “a mimic warfare,” and 
 Unless an officer could play ’em 
 He had no leg on which to stand. 
 
 “ O hasn’t he ? ” says Mr. Graham ! 
 
 “ Go mark the Jap ! He wades in gore, 
 
 He gives, and takes, the shrewdest knocks, 
 Although he never snicked a four, 
 
 Or ran to earth the ruddy fox ; 
 
 He laughs to hear the bullets hum, 
 
 ‘ Banzai ! ’ he yells and lays the foe low ; 
 And yet he never screwed a scrum, 
 
 Or took a casual toss at polo. 
 
 “ How he achieves it, who can say ? 
 
 I don’t suppose he ever stood 
 Intent to grass his fluttered prey 
 Outside a pheasant-haunted wood ; 
 
 Yet thus employed, or in the course 
 Of armed affrays with instant rabbits, 
 
 We think to learn that cool resource 
 Which stamps the man of martial habits. 
 
 “ ? Tis true, at times, he has his fling 
 Upon a river-bank or mole, 
 
 Trying for fish with baited string 
 Dependent from a bamboo-pole ; 
 
 Yet he pursues this gentle art 
 Rather by way of relaxation 
 Than as a prime essential part 
 Of military education. 
 
i 4 4 
 
 Salvage 
 
 “ He routs the Cossack ; yet he spends 
 No time on racing, nor can see 
 
 Much merit in a school that tends 
 To feats (we’re told) of chivalry ; 
 
 Can you conceive our soldiers’ brains 
 Reft of the tipster’s useful knowledge ? 
 
 Or picture Ascot’s tented plains 
 
 Without the Camberley Staff-College ? ” 
 
 O Mr. Graham, you have cleft 
 This heart in two by your report ; 
 
 At worst we had one solace left — 
 
 Our manhood’s faith in British Sport ! 
 
 The rest might go — art, science, trade — 
 Sport was the only thing that mattered ; 
 
 On this the Empire’s base was laid, 
 
 And now — that last illusion’s shattered ! 
 
( 145 ) 
 
 A TONIC FOR THE DUMPS 
 
 [“ The difficulty in the photograph post-card business 
 is to find new ideas. The public is tiring of the laughing 
 girls. The demand is for the pensive, the soulful, and the 
 spirituelle.”] 
 
 When in my walks abroad, a sombre bard, 
 
 I sampled Beauties, unimpaired by age, 
 Perpetuating on a postal card 
 
 The stolid giggle hallowed by the Stage ; 
 
 When I observed the lips that gaped apart, 
 
 The boon expanse of teeth, the dimpled chin 
 (Proof of the rapture they derived from Art) — 
 
 0 ! how I grudged them that perennial grin ! 
 
 “ Nightly,” I said, “ they play their lyric scene, 
 And wag their legs about, and wear a smile, 
 And even when they’ve washed their faces clean 
 It won’t come off ; they wear it all the while. 
 
 “ I couldn’t do it. Though I had the wit 
 To hum in tights beneath a picture hat, 
 
 Or wave my petticoats to thrill the pit, 
 
 1 couldn’t keep a steady smile like that. 
 
 “ I follow Art myself — in humbler ways, 
 
 Where elements of laughter ought to lurk, 
 
 Yet, being photographed, I fail to raise 
 
 More than the ghostly semblance of a smirk.” 
 
 L 
 
146 Salvage 
 
 Something was wanting. That was why I 
 bought 
 
 These types of grinning Beauty by the gross, 
 And set them on my mantelpiece and thought : 
 
 “ This spectacle will make me less morose.’’ 
 
 It didn’t. On the contrary, I wore 
 An air of worse depression every day, 
 
 Till I could bear the dreadful sight no more, 
 Because in that direction madness lay. 
 
 Thank Heaven that saved my reason in the 
 nick ! 
 
 For Fashion, not before the hour was ripe, 
 Dethroned the simpering sort that made me sick 
 And boomed instead the pensive, soulful type. 
 
 Now in my gallery, stocked with fresh supplies 
 (Ethereal creatures, save in point of wings), 
 
 I see the spirit gaze through dreamy eyes, 
 Trying to cope with transcendental things ; 
 
 Above unearthly brows a vague unrest, 
 
 Sign of immortal yearning, darkly broods, 
 
 And lo ! a weight is lifted off my chest, 
 
 And I am purged of pessimistic moods ; 
 
 Yes, when I watch them doing all they know 
 To look the part of Intellectual Grace, 
 
 Then to the winds I let my megrims go, 
 
 And laugh till I am crimson in the face ! 
 
( i47 ) 
 
 AN END OF DANCING 
 
 “ Nunc arma, defunctumque bello 
 Barbiton hie paries habebit.” 
 
 “ Unarm, Eros.” 
 
 Time was, a few brief lustres back, 
 
 When in the many-damsel’d dance, 
 
 Ere I had grown supine and slack, 
 
 It was my purest joy to prance 
 The whole night long, 
 
 Returning with the milkman’s matin song. 
 
 My waist was relatively slim, 
 
 And to the waltz’s amorous flow 
 
 None brought a lustier turn of limb, 
 
 A lighter, more elastic toe ; 
 
 It was a treat 
 
 Merely to sit and watch my mobile feet. 
 
 But now the jumping movement jars 
 Upon a frame maturely stout ; 
 
 And when I’ve borne a dozen bars 
 I find my wind is giving out ; 
 
 I wheeze ; I puff ; 
 
 I tell my partner I have had enough. 
 
148 
 
 Salvage 
 
 And while I undergo repair, 
 
 And she, impatient, paws the ground, 
 
 I ask myself what brought me there, 
 
 Why should I go careering round, 
 
 Hustled and hot, 
 
 And talking unimaginable rot ? 
 
 Such, roughly, be the reasons why 
 At 10 p.m., replete with food, 
 
 When o’er a pipe my pensive eye 
 Betrays the after-dinner mood, 
 
 I loathe to rise 
 
 And irk myself with choric exercise. 
 
 Ah, Ladies, you whose halls of light 
 Lament the dearth of dancing males, 
 
 Have pity ! Though my heart is right, 
 
 Think of the solid flesh that quails ! 
 
 Ask me no more 
 
 To pound with ponderous foot the shining floor 
 
 And you, Terpsichore, the One 
 
 I wooed the most of all the Nine ! — 
 
 Now that my palmy days are done, 
 
 Now, ere my drooping powers decline 
 By further slumps — 
 
 To you I dedicate these pious pumps ! 
 
( H9 ) 
 
 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 George Frederick Watts. 
 
 Born, 1817. Died, July i, 1904. 
 
 Here, in an age when fashion’s test of worth 
 Follows the price at which the markets buy, 
 When the great Thought that slips the bounds 
 of earth 
 
 Gives way to craftsmanship of hand and 
 eye ; 
 
 When Art, content to find perfection’s goal 
 Through schemes of form and colour, light 
 and shade, 
 
 Cares not to make appeal from soul to soul 
 Lest she should trespass on the preacher’s 
 trade ; 
 
 He knew her destined mission, dared to hail 
 The place assigned her in the heavenly plan, 
 Reader of visions hid behind the veil, 
 
 Elect interpreter of God to man. 
 
 His means were servants to the end in view, 
 And not the end’s self ; so his heart was wise 
 To hold — as they have held, the chosen few — 
 High failure dearer than the easy prize. 
 
Salvage 
 
 * 5 ° 
 
 Now, lifted face to face with unseen things 
 Dimly imagined in the lower life, 
 
 He sees his Hope renew her broken strings, 
 And Love and Death no more at bitter strife. 
 
 Thomas John Barnardo. 
 
 Born, 1845. Died, September 19, 1905. 
 
 “ Suffer the children unto Me to come, 
 
 The little children,” said the voice of Christ, 
 And for his law whose lips to-day are dumb 
 The Master’s word sufficed. 
 
 “ Suffer the little children ” so He spake, 
 
 And in His steps that true disciple trod, 
 Lifting the helpless ones, for love’s pure sake, 
 Up to the arms of God. 
 
 Naked, he clothed them; hungry, gave them food; 
 
 Homeless and sick, a hearth and healing care ; 
 Led them from haunts where vice and squalor 
 brood 
 
 To gardens clean and fair. 
 
 By birthright pledged to misery, crime, and 
 shame, 
 
 Jetson of London’s streets, her “ waifs and 
 strays,” 
 
 Whom she, the Mother, bore without a name, 
 And left, and went her ways — 
 
In Memoriam 
 
 151 
 
 He stooped to save them, set them by his side, 
 Breathed conscious life into the still-born soul, 
 Taught truth and honour, love and loyal pride, 
 Courage and self-control. 
 
 Till of her manhood, here and overseas, 
 
 On whose supporting strength her state is 
 throned, 
 
 None better serves the Motherland than these 
 Her sons the once disowned. 
 
 To-day, in what far lands, their eyes are dim, 
 Children again, with tears they well may shed, 
 Orphaned a second time who mourn in him 
 A foster-father dead. 
 
 But he, who had their love for sole reward, 
 
 In that far home to which his feet have won — 
 He hears at last the greeting of his Lord : 
 
 “ Servant of Mine, well done ! ” 
 
 BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE. 
 

 
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