around For monks in cloisters grey, Till fled the monks in disarray From their warm chantry's fold, The Abbots slumber as they may, Beside your manor old! ENVOY. Creeds, empires, peoples, all decay, Down into darkness, rolled; May life that's fleet be sweet, I pray, Beside your manor old! 

TO

MRS. ELTON

OF WHITE STAUNTON

ENVOY

 BALLADE OF LITERARY FAME   "All these for Fourpence."   Oh, where are the endless Romances Our grandmothers used to adore? The Knights with their helms and their lances, Their shields and the favours they wore? And the Monks with their magical lore? They have passed to Oblivion and Nox They have fled to the shadowy shore,— They are all in the Fourpenny Box! And where the poetical fancies Our fathers were fond of, of yore? The lyric's melodious expanses, The Epics in cantos a score? They have been and are not: no more Shall the shepherds drive silvery flocks, Nor the ladies their long words deplore,— They are all in the Fourpenny Box! And the Music! The songs and the dances? The tunes that Time may not restore? And the tomes where Divinity prances? And the pamphlets where Heretics roar? They have ceased to be even a bore,— The Divine, and the Sceptic who mocks,— They are "cropped," they are "foxed" to core,— They are all in the Fourpenny Box! ENVOY. Suns beat on them; tempests downpour, On the chest without cover or locks, Where they lie by the Bookseller's door,— They are all in the Fourpenny Box! 

ENVOY

 BALLADE OF BLUE CHINA There's a joy without canker or cark, There's a pleasure eternally new, 'T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark Of china that's ancient and blue; Unchipp'd, all the centuries through It has pass'd, since the chime of it rang, And they fashion'd it, figure and hue, In the reign of the Emperor Hwang. These dragons (their tails, you remark, Into bunches of gillyflowers grew),— When Noah came out of the ark, Did these lie in wait for his crew? They snorted, they snapp'd, and they slew, They were mighty of fin and of fang, And their portraits Celestials drew In the reign of the Emperor Hwangs. Here's a pot with a cot in a park, In a park where the peach-blossoms blew, Where the lovers eloped in the dark, Lived, died, and were changed into two Bright birds that eternally flew Through the boughs of the may, as they sang; 'T is a tale was 

 Prev. P 3/64 next