Ballade Of Summer

TO C. H. A.

When strawberry pottles are common and cheap, Ere elms be black, or limes be sere, When midnight dances are murdering sleep, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And far from Fleet street, far from here, The Summer is Queen in the length of the land, And moonlit nights they are soft and clear, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When clamour that doves in the lindens keep Mingles with musical plash of the weir, Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And better a crust and a beaker of beer, With rose-hung hedges on either hand, Than a palace in town and a prince's cheer, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

When big trout late in the twilight leap, When cuckoo clamoureth far and near, When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And it's oh to sail, with the wind to steer, While kine knee deep in the water stand, On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

ENVOY.

Friend, with the fops, while we dawdle here, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand!

BALLADE OF AUTUMN.

We built a castle in the air, In summer weather, you and I, The wind and sun were in your hair,-- Gold hair against a sapphire sky: When Autumn came, with leaves that fly Before the storm, across the plain, You fled from me, with scarce a sigh-- My Love returns no more again!

The windy lights of Autumn flare: I watch the moonlit sails go by; I marvel how men toil and fare, The weary business that they ply! Their voyaging is vanity, And fairy gold is all their gain, And all the winds of winter cry, "My Love returns no more again!"

Here, in my castle of Despair, I sit alone with memory; The wind-fed wolf has left his lair, To keep the outcast company. The brooding owl he hoots hard by, The hare shall kindle on thy hearth-stane, The Rhymer's soothest prophecy,-- My Love returns no more again!

ENVOY.

Lady, my home until I die Is here, where youth and hope were slain; They flit, the ghosts of our July, My Love returns no more again!

BALLADE OF OLD PLAYS.

TO BRANDER MATTHEWS.

(Les Œuvres de Monsieur Molière. A Paris, chez Louys Billaine, à la Palme. M.D.C.LXVI.)

LA COUR.

When these Old Plays were new, the King, Beside the Cardinal's chair, Applauded, 'mid the courtly ring, The verses of Molière; Point-lace was then the only wear, Old Corneille came to woo, And bright Du Parc was young and fair, When these Old Plays were new!

LA COMÉDIE.

How shrill the butcher's cat-calls ring, How loud the lackeys swear! Black pipe-bowls on the stage they fling, At Brecourt, fuming there! The Porter's stabbed! a Mousquetaire Breaks in with noisy crew-- 'T was all a commonplace affair When these Old Plays were new!

LA VILLE.

When these Old Plays were new! They bring A host of phantoms rare: Old jests that float, old jibes that sting, Old faces peaked with care: Menage's smirk, de Visé's stare, The thefts of Jean Ribou,-- Ah, publishers were hard to bear When these Old Plays were new.

ENVOY.

Ghosts, at your Poet's word ye dare To break Death's dungeons through, And frisk, as in that golden air, When these Old Plays were new!