Owen Seaman

(AFTER R. LE G.)

Is this the Seine?
And am I altogether wrong
About the brain,
Dreaming I hear the British tongue?
Dear Heaven! what a rhyme!
And yet 'tis all as good
As some that I have fashioned in my time,
Like bud and wood;
And on the other hand you couldn't have a more precise or neater
Metre.

Is this, I ask, the Seine?
And yonder sylvan lane,
Is it the Bois?
Ma foi!
Comme elle est chic, my Paris, my grisette!
Yet may I not forget
That London still remains the missus
Of this Narcissus.

No, no! 'tis not the Seine!
It is the artificial mere
That permeates St. James's Park.
The air is bosom-shaped and clear;
And, Himmel! do I hear the lark,
The good old Shelley-Words...

[On an advertisement of A Comedy of Sighs.]


Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
    You're getting quite a high renown;
Your Comedy of Leers, you know,
    Is posted all about the town;
This sort of stuff I cannot puff,
    As Boston says, it makes me 'tired';
Your Japanee-Rossetti girl
    Is not a thing to be desired.

Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
    New English Art (excuse the chaff)
Is like the Newest Humour style,
    It's not a thing at which to laugh;
But all the same, you need not maim
    A beauty reared on Nature's rules;
A simple maid au naturel
    Is worth a dozen spotted ghouls.

Mr. Aubrey Beer de Beers,
    You put strange phantoms on our walls,
If not so daring as To-day's,
    Nor quite so Ha...

(AFTER J. D.)

'I am sister to the mountains now,
        And sister to the sun and moon.'

'Heed not belletrist jargon.'

                    JOHN DAVIDSON.


From Whitsuntide to Whitsuntide,
    That is to say, all through the year,
Her patient pen was occupied
    With songs and tales of pleasant cheer.

But still her talent went to waste
    Like flotsam on an open sea;
She never hit the public taste,
    Or knew the knack of Bellettrie.

Across the sounding City's fogs
    There hurtled round her weary head
The thunder of the rolling logs;
    "The Critics' Carnival!" she said.

Immortal prigs took heaven by storm,
    Prigs scattered largesses of praise;
The work of both was rather warm;
    "Th...

(AFTER W. W.)

[To Mr. St. Loe Strachey.]

Dawn of the year that emerges, a fine and ebullient Phœnix,
    Forth from the cinders of Self, out of the ash of the Past;
Year that discovers my Muse in the thick of purpureal sonnets,
    Slating diplomacy's sloth, blushing for 'Abdul the d----d';
Year that in guise of a herald declaring the close of the tourney
    Clears the redoubtable lists hot with the Battle of Bays;
Binds on the brows of the Tory, the highly respectable Austin,
    Laurels that Phœbus of old wore on the top of his tuft;

Leaving the locks of the hydra, of Bodley the numerous-headed,
    Clean as the chin of a boy, bare as a babe in a bath;
Year that, I see in the vista the principal verb of the sentence
    Loom as a deeply-desired bride tha...

[M. Alfred Austin, poete-laureat d'Angleterre, vient d'arriver a Nice, où il a devance la Reine. Il etait, hier, dans les jardins de Monte-Carlo. Sera-ce sous notre ciel qu'il ecrira son premier poeme?, Menton-Mondain.]


Wrong? are they wrong? Of course they are,
    I venture to reply;
For I bore 'my first' (and, I hope, my worst)
    A month or so gone by;
And I can't repeat it under this
    Or any other sky.

What! has the public never heard
    In these benighted climes
That nascent note of my Laureate throat,
    That fluty fitte of rhymes
Which occupied about a half
    A column of the Times?

They little know what they have lost,
    Nor what a carnal beano
They might have spent in the thick of Lent
    If only Daniel...

(AFTER SIR E. A.)

1. From the third Sa'dine Box of the eighth Gazelle of Ghazal.

Ya Ya! Best-Beloved! I look to thy dimples and drink;
Tiddlihi! to thy cheek-pits and chin-pit, my Tulip, my Pink!

See my heart rises up like a bubble, and bursts in my throat,
And the dimples that draw it are Three, like the Men in a Boat.

Thrice Three are the Muses, and I that begat her should guess
That the Tenth is the TE-LE-EPHE-MERA, Pride of the PRESS!

And the Graces were triplets till lately the fruitful Diti
Propagated a Fourth, and the infant was W. G.

From my post of Propinquity prone on my languorous knees
My tears slither down like the Gum of Arabia's trees.

"Am I drunk?" Heart-Entangler! By Hafiz, the Blender of Squish!
'Tis the came...

We, William, Kaiser, planted on Our throne
By heaven's grace, but chiefly by Our own,
Do deign to speak. Then let the earth be dumb,
And other nations cease their senseless hum!
    Seldom, if ever, does a chance arise
For Us to pose before Our people's eyes;
But this is one of them, this natal day
Whereon Our Ancient and Imperial sway,
Which to the battle's death-defying trump
Welded the States in one confounded lump,
(As many tasty meats are blent within
The German sausage's encircling skin)
By Our decree is twenty-five precisely,
And, under Us (and God) still doing nicely.
    Therefore ye Princelings, Plenipotentates,
And Representatives of various States,
A cool Imperial pint your Kaiser drains,
Both to Our 'more immediate' domains,
And to Our l...

Exhumed from out the inner cirque of Hell
    By kind permission of the Evil One,
    Behold her devilish presentment, done
By Master Aubrey's weird unearthly spell!
This is that Lady known as Jezebel,
    Or Lilith, Eden's woman-scorpion,
    Libifera, that is, that takes the bun,
Borgia, Vivien, Cussed Damosel.

Hers are the bulging lips that fairly break
    The pumpkin's heart; and hers the eyes that shame
        The wanton ape that culls the cocoa-nuts.
Even such the yellow-bellied toads that slake
    Nocturnally their amorous-ardent flame
        In the wan waste of weary water-butts.

My heart is like a driver-club,
    That heaves the pellet hard and straight,
That carries every let and rub,
    The whole performance really great;
My heart is like a bulger-head,
    That whiffles on the wily tee,
Because my love has kindly said
    She'll halve the round of life with me.

My heart is also like a cleek,
    Resembling most the mashie sort,
That spanks the object, so to speak,
    Across the sandy bar to port;
And hers is like a putting-green,
    The haven where I boast to be,
For she assures me she is keen
    To halve the round of life with me.

Raise me a bunker, if you can,
    That beetles o'er a deadly ditch,
Where any but the bogey-man
    Is practically bound to pitch;
Plant me beneath a hedge of thorn,...

(AFTER SIR L. M.)

                        Next I saw
A pensive gentleman of middle age,
That leaned against a Druid oak, his pipe
Pendent beneath his chin, a double one,
(Meaning the pipe); reluctant was his breath,
For he had mingled in the Morris dance
And rested blown; but damsels in their teens,
All decorous and decorously clad,
Their very ankles hardly visible,
Recalled his motions; while, for chaperon,
Good Mrs. Grundy up against the wall
Beamed approbation.

                On his face I read
Signs of high sadness such as poets wear,
Being divinely discontented with
The praise of jeunes filles. Even as I looked,
He touched the portion of his pipe reserved
For minor poetry of solemn tone,
Checking the humorous stops inten...

[It was hardly to be supposed that the young decadents who once rioted ... in the Yellow Book would be content to remain in obscurity after the metamorphosis of that periodical and the consequent exclusion of themselves. The Savoy, we learn, to be edited by Mr. Arthur Symons and Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, will appear early in December. Globe.]


'The world's great age begins anew,'
    Cold virtue's weeds are cast;
Our heads are light, our tales are blue,
    And things are moving fast;
And no one any longer quarrels
With anybody else's morals.

A racier journal stamps its pages
    With Beardsleys braver far;
A bolder Editor engages
    To shame the morning star,
On London Nights, not near so chilly,
Sampling a shadier Piccadilly.

I've been trying to fashion a wifely ideal,
    And find that my tastes are so far from concise
That, to marry completely, no fewer than three'll
                    Suffice

I've subjected my views to severe atmospheric
    Compression, but still, in defiance of force,
They distinctly fall under three heads, like a cleric
                    Discourse.

My first must be fashion's own fancy-bred daughter,
    Proud, peerless, and perfect in fact, comme il faut;
A waltzer and wit of the very first water
                    For show.

But these beauties that serve to make all the men jealous,
    Once face them alone in the family cot,
Heaven's angels incarnate (the novelists tell us)
                    They're not.

(AFTER R. K.)

[N.B., No nautical terms or statements guaranteed.]

Away by the haunts of the Yang-tse-boo,
    Where the Yuletide runs cold gin,
And the rollicking sign of the Lord Knows Who
    Sees mariners drink like sin;
Where the Jolly Roger tips his quart
    To the luck of the Union Jack;
And some are screwed on the foreign port,
    And some on the starboard tack;,
Ever they tell the tale anew
    Of the chase for the kipperling swag;
How the smack Tommy This and the smack Tommy That
They broached each other like a whiskey-vat,
    And the Fuzzy-Wuz took the bag.

Now this is the law of the herring fleet that harries the northern main,
Tattooed in scars on the chests of the tars with a brand lik...

(AFTER A. C. S.)

In the days of my season of salad,
    When the down was as dew on my cheek,
And for French I was bred on the ballad,
    For Greek on the writers of Greek,
Then I sang of the rose that is ruddy,
    Of 'pleasure that winces and stings,'
Of white women and wine that is bloody,
    And similar things.

Of Delight that is dear as Desi-er,
    And Desire that is dear as Delight;
Of the fangs of the flame that is fi-er,
    Of the bruises of kisses that bite;
Of embraces that clasp and that sever,
    Of blushes that flutter and flee
Round the limbs of Dolores, whoever
    Dolores may be.

I sang of false faith that is fleeting
    As froth of the swallowing seas,
Time's curse that is fatal as Keating
    Is fat...

[On Drake's return from his filibustering expedition of 1580 the Queen went on board his ship at Deptford, and after partaking of a banquet conferred on him the honour of knighthood, at the same time declaring herself mightily pleased with all that he had done.]


I wish that I had flourished then,
    When ruffs and raids were in the fashion,
When Shakespeare's art and Raleigh's pen
    Encouraged patriotic passion;
For though I draw my happy breath
    Beneath a Queen as good and gracious,
The times of Great Elizabeth
    Were more conveniently spacious.

Large-hearted age of cakes and ale!
    When, undeterred by nice conditions,
Good Master Drake would lightly sail
    On little privateer commissions;
Careering round with sword and flame
    And no pr...

PART I. PRESTO FURIOSO.


Spontaneous Us!
O my Camarados! I have no delicatesse as a diplomat, but I go blind on Libertad!
Give me the flap-flap of the soaring Eagle's pinions!
Give me the tail of the British lion tied in a knot inextricable, not to be solved anyhow!
Give me a standing army (I say 'give me,' because just at present we want one badly, armies being often useful in time of war).

I see our superb fleet (I take it that we are to have a superb fleet built almost immediately);
I observe the crews prospectively; they are constituted of various nationalities, not necessarily American;
I see them sling the slug and chew the plug;
I hear the drum begin to hum;

Both the above rhymes are purely accidental and contrary to my principles.
We shall wipe the floor...

[Showing curious reversal of epigram, 'La nature l'a fait sanglier; la civilisation l'a reduit a l'etat de cochon.']


But my good little man, you have made a mistake
    If you really are pleased to suppose
That the Thames is alight with the lyrics you make;
    We could all do the same if we chose.

From Solomon down, we may read, as we run,
    Of the ways of a man and a maid;
There is nothing that's new to us under the sun,
    And certainly not in the shade.

The erotic affairs that you fiddle aloud
    Are as vulgar as coin of the mint;
And you merely distinguish yourself from the crowd
    By the fact that you put 'em in print.

You're a 'prentice, my boy, in the primitive stage,
    And you itch, like a boy, to confess:
When you kno...

and a Herrickose vein.


Whenas to shoot my Julia goes,
Then, then, (methinks) how bravely shows
That rare arrangement of her clothes!

So shod as when the Huntress Maid
With thumping buskin bruised the glade,
She moveth, making earth afraid.

Against the sting of random chaff
Her leathern gaiters circle half
The arduous crescent of her calf.

Unto th' occasion timely fit,
My love's attire doth show her wit,
And of her legs a little bit.

Sorely it sticketh in my throat,
She having nowhere to bestow't,
To name the absent petticoat.

In lieu whereof a wanton pair
Of knickerbockers she doth wear,
Full windy and with space to spare.

Enlarged by the bellying breeze,
Lord! how they playfully do ease
...