Voices Of The Night
'The tender Grace of a day that is past.'
The dew is on the roses,
The owl hath spread her wing;
And vocal are the noses
Of peasant and of king:
'Nature' (in short) 'reposes;'
But I do no such thing.
Pent in my lonesome study
Here I must sit and muse;
Sit till the morn grows ruddy,
Till, rising with the dews,
'Jeameses' remove the muddy
Spots from their masters' shoes.
Yet are sweet faces flinging
Their witchery o'er me here:
I hear sweet voices singing
A song as soft, as clear,
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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Love
1 Canst thou love me, lady?
2 I've not learn'd to woo:
3 Thou art on the shady
4 Side of sixty too.
5 Still I love thee dearly!
6 Thou hast lands and pelf:
7 But I love thee merely
8 Merely for thyself.
9 Wilt thou love me, fairest?
10 Though thou art not fair;
11 And I think thou wearest
12 Someone-else's hair.
13 Thou could'st love, though, dearly:
14 And, as I am told,
15 Thou art very nearly
16 Worth thy weight, in gold.
17 Dost thou love me, sweet love?
18 Tell me that thou dost!
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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Striking
It was a railway passenger,
And he lept out jauntilie.
'Now up and bear, thou stout porter,
My two chattels to me.
'Bring hither, bring hither my bag so red,
And portmanteau so brown:
(They lie in the van, for a trusty man
He labelled them London town
'And fetch me eke a cabman bold,
That I may be his fare, his fare;
And he shall have a good shilling,
If by two of the clock he do me bring
To the Terminus, Euston Square.'
'Now,--so to thee the saints alway,
Good gentleman, give luck, -
As never a cab may I find this day,
For the cabman wights have struck:
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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Isabel
Now o'er the landscape crowd the deepening shades,
And the shut lily cradles not the bee;
The red deer couches in the forest glades,
And faint the echoes of the slumberous sea:
And ere I rest, one prayer I'll breathe for thee,
The sweet Egeria of my lonely dreams:
Lady, forgive, that ever upon me
Thoughts of thee linger, as the soft starbeams
Linger on Merlin's rock, or dark Sabrina's streams.
On gray Pilatus once we loved to stray,
And watch far off the glimmering roselight break
O'er the dim mountain-peaks, ere yet one ray
Pierced the deep bosom of the mist-clad lake.
Oh! who felt not new life within him wake,
And his pulse quicken, and his spirit burn -
(Save one we wot of, whom the cold DID make
Feel 'shooting pains in every joint in turn,')
When first he saw the sun gild thy green shores, Lucerne?
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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Companions - A Tale Of A Grandfather
I KNOW not of what we ponder’d
Or made pretty pretence to talk,
As, her hand within mine, we wander’d
Tow’rd the pool by the lime-tree walk,
While the dew fell in showers from the passion flowers
And the blush-rose bent on her stalk.
I cannot recall her figure:
Was it regal as Juno’s own?
Or only a trifle bigger
Than the elves who surround the throne
Of the Faëry Queen, and are seen, I ween,
By mortals in dreams alone?
What her eyes were like I know not:
Perhaps they were blurr’d with tears;
And perhaps in you skies there glow not
(On the contrary) clearer spheres.
No! as to her eyes I am just as wise
As you or the cat, my dears.
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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The Auld Wife
PART I
The auld wife sat at her ivied door,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
A thing she had frequently done before;
And her spectacles lay on her apron’d knees.
The piper he pip’d on the hill-top high,
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
Till the cow said, “I die,” and the goose asked “Why?”
And the dog said nothing, but search’d for fleas.
The farmer he strode through the square farmyard;
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
His last brew of ale was a trifle hard,
The connection of which with the plot one sees.
The farmer’s daughter hath frank blue eyes;
(Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
She hears the rooks caw in the windy skies,
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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There Stands A City
Ingoldsby
Year by year do Beauty's daughters,
In the sweetest gloves and shawls,
Troop to taste the Chattenham waters,
And adorn the Chattenham balls.
'Nulla non donanda lauru'
Is that city: you could not,
Placing England's map before you,
Light on a more favoured spot.
If no clear translucent river
Winds 'neath willow-shaded paths,
'Children and adults' may shiver
All day in 'Chalybeate baths:'
If 'the inimitable Fechter'
Never brings the gallery down,
Constantly 'the Great Protector'
There 'rejects the British crown:'
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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Ode--'On A Distant Prospect' Of Making A Fortune
Now the 'rosy morn appearing'
Floods with light the dazzled heaven;
And the schoolboy groans on hearing
That eternal clock strike seven:-
Now the waggoner is driving
Towards the fields his clattering wain;
Now the bluebottle, reviving,
Buzzes down his native pane.
But to me the morn is hateful:
Wearily I stretch my legs,
Dress, and settle to my plateful
Of (perhaps inferior) eggs.
Yesterday Miss Crump, by message,
Mentioned 'rent,' which 'p'raps I'd pay;'
And I have a dismal presage
That she'll call, herself, to-day.
Once, I breakfasted off rosewood,
Smoked through silver-mounted pipes -
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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Dirge
'Dr. Birch's young friends will reassemble to-day, Feb. 1st.'
White is the wold, and ghostly
The dank and leafless trees;
And 'M's and 'N's are mostly
Pronounced like 'B's and 'D's:
'Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted,
The sheep stands, mute and stolid:
And ducks find out, disgusted,
That all the ponds are solid.
Many a stout steer's work is
(At least in this world) finished;
The gross amount of turkies
Is sensibly diminished:
The holly-boughs are faded,
The painted crackers gone;
Would I could write, as Gray did,
An Elegy thereon!
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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Visions
'She was a phantom,' &c.
In lone Glenartney's thickets lies couched the lordly stag,
The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag;
And plodding ploughmen's weary steps insensibly grow quicker,
As broadening casements light them on towards home, or home-brewed
liquor.
It is (in fact) the evening--that pure and pleasant time,
When stars break into splendour, and poets into rhyme;
When in the glass of Memory the forms of loved ones shine -
And when, of course, Miss Goodchild's is prominent in mine.
Miss Goodchild!--Julia Goodchild!--how graciously you smiled
Upon my childish passion once, yourself a fair-haired child:
When I was (no doubt) profiting by Dr. Crabb's instruction,
And sent those streaky lollipops home for your fairy suction!
'She wore' her natural 'roses, the night when first we met' -
Her golden hair was gleaming 'neath the coercive net:
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poem by Charles Stuart Calverley
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