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PART IV

FAMILIAR VERSE, AND POEMS

HUMOROUS AND SATIRIC

"What did the dark-haired Iberian laugh at before the tall blonde Aryan drove him into the corners of Europe?"-BRANDER MATTHEWS

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THE KINDLY MUSE

TIME TO BE WISE

YES; I write verses now and then,
But blunt and flaccid is my pen,
No longer talked of by young men
As rather clever:

In the last quarter are my eyes,
You see it by their form and size;
Is it not time then to be wise?
Or now or never.

Fairest that ever sprang from Eve!
While Time allows the short reprieve,
Just look at me! would you believe
'Twas once a lover?

I cannot clear the five-bar gate;
But, trying first its timber's state,
Climb stiffly up, take breath, and wait
To trundle over.

Through gallopade I cannot swing

The entangling blooms of Beauty's spring: I cannot say the tender thing,

Be't true or false,

And am beginning to opine

Those girls are only half-divine

Whose waists yon wicked boys entwine
In giddy waltz.

I fear that arm above that shoulder;
I wish them wiser, graver, older,

Sedater, and no harm if colder,

And panting less.

Ah! people were not half so wild
In former days, when, starchly mild,
Upon her high-heeled Essex smiled
The brave Queen Bess.

Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]

UNDER THE LINDENS

UNDER the lindens lately sat

A couple, and no more, in chat;
I wondered what they would be at
Under the lindens.

I saw four eyes and four lips meet,

I heard the words, "How sweet! how sweet!"
Had then the Fairies given a treat

Under the lindens?

I pondered long and could not tell
What dainty pleased them both so well:

Bees! bees! was it your hydromel

Under the lindens?

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864]

ADVICE

To write as your sweet mother does

Is all you wish to do.

Play, sing, and smile for others, Rose!

Let others write for you.

Or mount again your Dartmoor gray,
And I will walk beside,

Until we reach that quiet bay

Which only hears the tide.

Then wave at me your pencil, then
At distance bid me stand,
Before the caverned cliff, again

The creature of your hand.

To Fanny

And bid me then go past the nook

To sketch me less in size;

There are but few content to look
So little in your eyes.

Delight us with the gifts you have,
And wish for none beyond:
To some be gay, to some be grave,
To one (blest youth!) be fond.

Pleasures there are how close to Pain
And better unpossessed!

Let poetry's too throbbing vein

Lie quiet in your breast.

1711

Walter Savage Landor [1775-1864]

TO FANNY

NEVER mind how the pedagogue proses,
You want not antiquity's stamp;

The lip, that such fragrance discloses,
Oh! never should smell of the lamp.

Old Chloe, whose withering kisses

Have long set the Loves at defiance,
Now, done with the science of blisses,
May fly to the blisses of science!

Young Sappho, for want of employments,
Alone o'er her Ovid may melt,
Condemned but to read of enjoyments,
Which wiser Corinna had felt.

But for you to be buried in books-
Oh, Fanny! they're pitiful sages;
Who could not in one of your looks

Read more than in millions of pages!

Astronomy finds in your eyes

Better light than she studies above, And Music must borrow your sighs

As the melody fittest for Love,

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