Written by
Robert Browning |
I. THE FLOWER'S NAME
Here's the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.
II.
Down this side ofthe gravel-walk
She went while her rope's edge brushed the box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know;
But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!
III.
This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name:
What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake.
IV.
Roses, if I live and do well,
I may bring her, one of these days,
To fix you fast with as fine a spell,
Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;
But do not detain me now; for she lingers
There, like sunshine over the ground,
And ever I see her soft white fingers
Searching after the bud she found.
V.
Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
Stay as you are and be loved for ever!
Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not:
Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn and down they nestle---
Is not the dear mark still to be seen?
VI.
Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow ber, beauties flee;
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
June's twice June since she breathed it with me?
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,
Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!
---Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces---
Roses, you are not so fair after all!
II. SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS.
Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,
Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,
Printed on paper and bound in leather,
Last month in the white of a matin-prime
Just when the birds sang all together.
II.
Into the garden I brought it to read,
And under the arbute and laurustine
Read it, so help me grace in my need,
From title-page to closing line.
Chapter on chapter did I count,
As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;
Added up the mortal amount;
And then proceeded to my revenge.
III.
Yonder's a plum-tree with a crevice
An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
In a castle of the Middle Age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;
When he'd be private, there might he spend
Hours alone in his lady's chamber:
Into this crevice I dropped our friend.
IV.
Splash, went he, as under he ducked,
---At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate:
Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked
To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;
Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;
Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.
V.
Now, this morning, betwixt the moss
And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,
And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,
And, _de profundis, accentibus ltis,
Cantate!_ quoth I, as I got a rake;
And up I fished his delectable treatise.
VI.
Here you have it, dry in the sun,
With all the binding all of a blister,
And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And reddish streaks that wink and glister
O'er the page so beautifully yellow:
Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!
Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?
Here's one stuck in his chapter six!
VII.
How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,
Came in, each one, for his right of trover?
---When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face
Made of her eggs the stately deposit,
And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface
As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?
VIII.
All that life and fun and romping,
All that frisking and twisting and coupling,
While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping
And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!
As if you bad carried sour John Knox
To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich,
Fastened him into a front-row box,
And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.
IX.
Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?
Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.
Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, _sufficit!_
See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!
A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,
Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,
And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,
Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!
|
Written by
Andrew Barton Paterson |
'Twas in scientific circles
That the great Professor Brown
Had a world-wide reputation
As a writer of renown.
He had striven finer feelings
In our natures to implant
By his Treatise on the Morals
Of the Red-eyed Bulldog Ant.
He had hoisted an opponent
Who had trodden unawares
On his "Reasons for Bare Patches
On the Female Native Bears".
So they gave him an appointment
As instructor to a band
Of the most attractive females
To be gathered in the land.
'Twas a "Ladies' Science Circle" --
Just the latest social fad
For the Nicest People only,
And to make their rivals mad.
They were fond of "science rambles"
To the country from the town --
A parade of female beauty
In the leadership of Brown.
They would pick a place for luncheon
And catch beetles on their rugs;
The Professor called 'em "optera" --
They calld 'em "nasty bugs".
Well, the thing was bound to perish
For no lovely woman can
Feel the slightest interest
In a club without a Man --
The Professor hardly counted
He was crazy as a loon,
With a countenance suggestive
Of an elderly baboon.
But the breath of Fate blew on it
With a sharp and sudden blast,
And the "Ladies' Science Circle"
Is a memory of the past.
There were two-and-twenty members,
Mostly young and mostly fair,
Who had made a great excursion
To a place called Dontknowwhere,
At the crossing of Lost River,
On the road to No Man's Land.
There they met an old selector,
With a stockwhip in his hand,
And the sight of so much beauty
Sent him slightly "off his nut";
So he asked them, smiling blandly,
"Would they come down to the hut?"
"I am come," said the Professor,
In his thin and reedy voice,
"To investigate your flora,
Which I feel is very choice."
The selector stared dumbfounded,
Till at last he found his tongue:
"To investigate my Flora!
Oh, you howlin' Brigham Young!
Why, you've two-and-twenty wimmen --
Reg'lar slap-up wimmen, too!
And you're after little Flora!
And a crawlin' thing like you!
Oh, you Mormonite gorilla!
Well, I've heard it from the first
That you wizened little fellers
Is a hundred times the worst!
But a dried-up ape like you are,
To be marchin' through the land
With a pack of lovely wimmen --
Well, I cannot understand!"
"You mistake," said the Professor,
In a most indignant tone --
While the ladies shrieked and jabbered
In a fashion of their own --
"You mistake about these ladies,
I'm a lecturer of theirs;
I am Brown, who wrote the Treatise
On the Female Native Bears!
When I said we wanted flora,
What I meant was native flowers."
"Well, you said you wanted Flora,
And I'll swear you don't get ours!
But here's Flora's self a-comin',
And it's time for you to skip,
Or I'll write a treatise on you,
And I'll write it with the whip!
Now I want no explanations;
Just you hook it out of sight,
Or you'll charm the poor girl some'ow!"
The Professor looked in fright:
She was six feet high and freckled,
And her hair was turkey-red.
The Professor gave a whimper,
And threw down his bag and fled,
And the Ladies' Science Circle,
With a simultaneous rush,
Travelled after its Professor,
And went screaming through the bush!
At the crossing of Lost River,
On the road to No Man's Land,
Where the grim and ghostly gumtrees
Block the view on every hand,
There they weep and wail and wander,
Always seeking for the track,
For the hapless old Professor
Hasn't sense to guide 'em back;
And they clutch at one another,
And they yell and scream in fright
As they see the gruesome creatures
Of the grim Australian night;
And they hear the mopoke's hooting,
And the dingo's howl so dread,
And the flying foxes jabber
From the gum trees overhead;
While the weird and wary wombats,
In their subterranean caves,
Are a-digging, always digging,
At those wretched people's graves;
And the pike-horned Queensland bullock,
From his shelter in the scrub,
Has his eye on the proceedings
Of the Ladies' Science Club.
|