Chapter I: KNOW not what my secret is,

I know but it is mine;
I know to dwell with it were bliss,
To die for it divine.
I cannot yield it in a kiss,
Nor breathe it in a sigh.
I know that I have lived for this;
For this, my love, I die.

THE HAUNTED HOMES OF ENGLAND

THE Haunted Homes of England,
How eerily they stand,
While through them flit their ghosts—to wit,
The Monk with the Red Hand,
The Eyeless Girl—an awful spook—
To stop the boldest breath,
The boy that inked his copybook,
And so got ‘wopped’ to death!

Call them not shams—from haunted Glamis
To haunted Woodhouselea,
I mark in hosts the grisly ghosts
I hear the fell Banshie!
I know the spectral dog that howls
Before the death of Squires;
In my ‘Ghosts’-guide’ addresses hide
For Podmore and for Myers!

I see the Vampire climb the stairs
From vaults below the church;
And hark! the Pirate’s spectre swears!
O Psychical Research,
Canst _thou_ not hear what meets my ear,
The viewless wheels that come?
The wild Banshie that wails to thee?
The Drummer with his drum?

O Haunted Homes of England,
Though tenantless ye stand,
With none content to pay the rent,
Through all the shadowy land,
Now, Science true will find in you
A sympathetic perch,
And take you all, both Grange and Hall,
For Psychical Research!

THE DISAPPOINTMENT

A HOUSE I took, and many a spook
Was deemed to haunt that House,
I bade the glum Researchers come
With Bogles to carouse.
That House I’d sought with anxious thought,
’Twas old, ’twas dark as sin,
And _deeds of bale_, so ran the tale,
Had oft been done therein.

Full many a child its mother wild,
Men said, had strangled there,
Full many a sire, in heedless ire,
Had slain his daughter fair!
’Twas rarely let: I can’t forget
A recent tenant’s dread,
This widow lone had heard a moan
Proceeding from her bed.

The tenants next were chiefly vexed
By spectres grim and grey.
A Headless Ghost annoyed them most,
And so they did not stay.
The next in turn saw corpse lights burn,
And also a Banshie,
A spectral Hand they could not stand,
And left the House to me.

Then came my friends for divers ends,
Some curious, some afraid;
No direr pest disturbed their rest
Than a neat chambermaid.
The grisly halls were gay with balls,
One melancholy nook
Where ghosts _galore_ were seen before
Now yielded ne’er a spook.

When man and maid, all unafraid,
‘Sat out’ upon the stairs,
No spectre dread, with feet of lead,
Came past them unawares.
I know not why, but alway I
Have found that it is so,
That when the glum Researchers come
The brutes of bogeys—go!

TO THE GENTLE READER

‘A French writer (whom I love well) speaks of three kinds of
companions,—men, women, and books.’

SIR JOHN DAVYS.

THREE kinds of companions, men, women, and books,
Were enough, said the elderly Sage, for his ends.
And the women we deem that he chose for their looks,
And the men for their cellars: the books were his friends:
‘Man delights me not,’ often, ‘nor woman,’ but books
Are the best of good comrades in loneliest nooks.

For man will be wrangling—for woman will fret
About anything infinitesimal small:
Like the Sage in our Plato, I’m ‘anxious to get
On the side’—on the sunnier side—‘of a wall.’
Let the wind of the world toss the nations like rooks,
If only you’ll leave me at peace with my Books.

And which are my books? why, ’tis much as you please,
For, given ’tis a book, it can hardly be wrong,
And Bradshaw himself I can study with ease,
Though for choice I might call for a Sermon or Song;
And Locker on London, and Sala on Cooks,
‘Tom Brown,’ and Plotinus, they’re all of them Books.

There’s Fielding to lap one in currents of mirth;
There’s Herrick to sing of a flower or a fay;
Or good Maître Françoys to bring one to earth,
If Shelley or Coleridge have snatched one away:
There’s Müller on Speech, there is Gurney on Spooks,
There is Tylor on Totems, there’s all sorts of Books.

There’s roaming in regions where every one’s been,
Encounters where no one was ever before,
There’s ‘Leaves’ from the Highlands we owe to the Queen,
There’s Holly’s and Leo’s adventures in Kôr:
There’s Tanner who dwelt with Pawnees and Chinooks,
You can cover a great deal of country in Books.

There are books, highly thought of, that nobody reads,
There is Geusius’ dearly delectable tome
Of the Cannibal—he on his neighbour who feeds—
And in blood-red morocco ’tis bound, by Derome;
There’s Montaigne here (a Foppens), there’s Roberts (on Flukes),
There’s Elzevirs, Aldines, and Gryphius’ Books.

There’s Bunyan, there’s Walton, in early editions,
There’s many a quarto uncommonly rare;
There’s quaint old Quevedo adream with his visions,
There’s Johnson the portly, and Burton the spare;
There’s Boston of Ettrick, who preached of the ‘Crooks
In the Lots’ of us mortals, who bargain for Books.

There’s Ruskin to keep one exclaiming ‘What next?’
There’s Browning to puzzle, and Gilbert to chaff,
And Marcus Aurelius to soothe one if vexed,
And good MARCUS TVAINUS to lend you a laugh;
There be capital tomes that are filled with fly-hooks,
And I’ve frequently found them the best kind of Books.

THE SONNET

POET, beware! The sonnet’s primrose path
Is all too tempting for thy feet to tread.
Not on this journey shalt thou earn thy bread,
Because the sated reader roars in wrath:
‘Little indeed to say the singer hath,
And little sense in all that he hath said;
Such rhymes are lightly writ but hardly read,
And naught but stubble is his aftermath!’

Then shall he cast that bonny book of thine
Where the extreme waste-paper basket gapes,
There shall thy futile fancies peak and pine,
With other minor poets, pallid shapes,
Who come a long way short of the divine,
Tormented souls of imitative apes.

THE TOURNAY OF THE HEROES

HO, warders, cry a tournay! ho, heralds, call the knights!
What gallant lance for old Romance ’gainst modern fiction fights?
The lists are set, the Knights are met, I ween, a dread array,
St. Chad to shield, a stricken field shall we behold to-day!
First to the Northern barriers pricks Roland of Roncesvaux,
And by his side, in knightly pride, Wilfred of Ivanhoe,
The Templar rideth by his rein, two gallant foes were they;
And proud to see, _le brave Bussy_ his colours doth display.

Ready at need he comes with speed, William of Deloraine,
And Hereward the Wake himself is pricking o’er the plain.
The good knight of La Mancha’s here, here is Sir Amyas Leigh,
And Eric of the gold hair, pride of Northern chivalry.
There shines the steel of Alan Breck, the sword of Athos shines,
Dalgetty on Gustavus rides along the marshalled lines,
With many a knight of sunny France the Cid has marched from Spain,
And Götz the Iron-handed leads the lances of Almain.

But who upon the Modern side are champions? With the sleeve
Adorned of his false lady-love, rides glorious David Grieve,
A bookseller sometime was he, in a provincial town,
But now before his iron mace go horse and rider down.
Ho, Robert Elsmere! count thy beads; lo, champion of the fray,
With brandished colt, comes Felix Holt, all of the Modern day.
And Silas Lapham’s six-shooter is cocked: the Colonel’s spry!
There spurs the wary Egoist, defiance in his eye;
There Zola’s ragged regiment comes, with dynamite in hand,
And Flaubert’s crew of country doctors devastate the land.
On Robert Elsmere Friar Tuck falls with his quarter-staff,
_Nom Dé_! to see the clerics fight might make the sourest laugh!
They meet, they shock, full many a knight is smitten on the crown,
So keep us good St. Geneviève, Umslopogaas is down!
About the mace of David Grieve his blood is flowing red,
Alas for ancient chivalry, _le brave Bussy_ is sped!
Yet where the sombre Templar rides the Modern caitiffs fly,
The Mummer (of _The Mummer’s Wife_) has got it in the eye,
From Felix Holt his patent Colt hath not averted fate,
And Silas Lapham’s smitten fair, right through his gallant pate.
There Dan Deronda reels and falls, a hero sore surprised;
_Ha_, _Beauséant_! still may such fate befall the Circumcised!
The Egoist is flying fast from him of Ivanhoe:
Beneath the axe of Skalagrim fall prigs at every blow:
The ragged Zolaists have fled, screaming ‘_We are betrayed_,’
But loyal Alan Breck is shent, stabbed through the Stuart plaid;
In sooth it is a grimly sight, so fast the heroes fall,
Three volumes fell could scarcely tell the fortunes of them all.
At length but two are left on ground, and David Grieve is one.
_Ma foy_, what deeds of derring-do that bookseller hath done!
The other, mark the giant frame, the great portentous fist!
’Tis Porthos! David Grieve may call on Kuenen an he list.
The swords are crossed; _Doublez_, _dégagez_, _vite_! great Porthos
calls,
And David drops, that secret _botte_ hath pierced his overalls!
And goodly Porthos, as of old the famed Orthryades,
Raises the trophy of the fight, then falling on his knees,
He writes in gore upon his shield, ‘Romance, Romance, has won!’
And blood-red on that stricken field goes down the angry sun.
Night falls upon the field of death, night on the darkling lea:
Oh send us such a tournay soon, and send me there to see!

BALLAD OF THE PHILANTHROPIST

POMONA Road and Gardens, N.,
Were pure as they were fair—
In other districts much I fear,
That vulgar language shocks the ear,
But brawling wives or noisy men
Were never heard of _there_.

No burglar fixed his dread abode
In that secure retreat,
There were no public-houses nigh,
But chapels low and churches high,
You might have thought Pomona Road
A quite ideal beat!

Yet that was not at all the view
Taken by B. 13.
That active and intelligent
Policeman deemed that he was meant
Profound detective deeds to do,
And that repose was mean.

Now there was nothing to detect
Pomona Road along—
None faked a cly, nor cracked a crib,
Nor prigged a wipe, nor told a fib,—
Minds cultivated and select
Slip rarely into wrong!

Thus bored to desolation went
The Peeler on his beat;
He know not Love, he did not care,
If Love be born on mountains bare;
Nay, crime to punish, or prevent,
Was more than dalliance sweet!

The weary wanderer, day by day,
Was marked by Howard Fry—
A neighbouring philanthropist,
Who saw what that Policeman missed—
A sympathetic ‘Well-a-day’
He’d moan, and pipe his eye.

‘What _can_ I do,’ asked Howard Fry,
‘To soothe that brother’s pain?
His glance when first we met was keen,
Most martial and erect his mien’
(What mien may mean, I know not I)
‘But _he_ must joy again.’

‘I’ll start on a career of crime,
I will,’ said Howard Fry—
He spake and acted! Deeds of bale
(With which I do not stain my tale)
He wrought like mad time after time,
Yet wrought them blushfully.

And now when ’buses night by night
Were stopped, conductors slain,
When youths and men, and maids unwed,
Were stabbed or knocked upon the head,
Then B. 13 grew sternly bright,
And was himself again!

Pomona Road and Gardens, N.,
Are now a name of fear.
Commercial travellers flee in haste,
Revolvers girt about the waist
Are worn by city gentlemen
Who have their mansions near.

But B. 13 elated goes,
Detection in his eye;
While Howard Fry does deeds of bale
(With which I do not stain my tale)
To lighten that Policeman’s woes,
But does them blushfully.

MORAL

Such is Philanthropy, my friends,
Too often such her plan,
She shoots, and stabs, and robs, and flings
Bombs, and all sorts of horrid things.
Ah, not to serve her private ends,
But for the good of Man!

NEIGES D’ANTAN

IN ERCILDOUNE

IN light of sunrise and sunsetting,
The long days lingered, in forgetting
That ever passion, keen to hold
What may not tarry, was of old
Beyond the doubtful stream whose flood
Runs red waist-high with slain men’s blood.

Was beauty once a thing that died?
Was pleasure never satisfied?
Was rest still broken by the vain
Desire of action, bringing pain,
To die in vapid rest again?
All this was quite forgotten, there
No winter brought us cold and care,
Nor spring gave promise unfulfilled,
Nor, with the heavy summer killed,
The languid days droop autumnwards.
So magical a season guards
The constant prime of a green June.
So slumbrous is the river’s tune,
That knows no thunder of rushing rains,
Nor ever in the summer wanes,
Like waters of the summer-time
In lands far from the fairy clime.

Alas! no words can bring the bloom
Of Fairyland, the lost perfume.
The sweet low light, the magic air,
To minds of who have not been there:
Alas! no words, nor any spell
Can lull the heart that knows too well
The towers that by the river stand,
The lost fair world of Fairyland.

Ah, would that I had never been
The lover of the Fairy Queen.
Or would that I again might be
Asleep below the Eildon Tree,
And see her ride the forest way
As on that morning of the May!

Or would that through the little town,
The grey old place of Ercildoune,
And all along the sleepy street
The soft fall of the white deer’s feet
Came, with the mystical command,
That I must back to Fairy Land!

FOR A ROSE’S SAKE

FRENCH FOLK-SONG