New forms may fold the speech, new lands
Arise within these ocean-portals,
But Music waves eternal wands,-
Enchantress of the souls of mortals!

So thought I, but among us trod

A man in blue, with legal baton,
And scoffed the vagrant demigod,
And pushed him from the step I sat on.
Doubting I mused upon the

cry,
"Great Pan is dead!"-and all the people
Went on their ways:-and clear and high
The quarter sounded from the steeple.

Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908)

UPON LESBIA-ARGUING

My Lesbia, I will not deny,
Bewitches me completely;

She has the usual beaming eye,
And smiles upon me sweetly:
But she has an unseemly way

Of contradicting what I say.

And, though I am her closest friend

And find her fascinating,

I cannot cordially commend

Her method of debating:

Her logic, though she is divine,
Is singularly feminine.

Her reasoning is full of tricks,
And butterfly suggestions,

I know no point to which she sticks,
She begs the simplest questions;
And, when her premises are strong,
She always draws her inference wrong.

Broad, liberal views on men and things
She will not hear a word of;
To prove herself correct she brings

Some instance she has heard of;

To Anthea

The argument ad hominem
Appears her favorite strategem.

Old Socrates, with sage replies
To questions put to suit him,
Would not, I think, have looked so wise
With Lesbia to confute him;

He would more probably have bade
Xantippe hasten to his aid.

Ah! well, my fair philosopher,

With clear brown eyes that glisten

So sweetly, that I much prefer
To look at them than listen,

Preach me your sermon: have your way,

The voice is yours,

whate'er you say.

Alfred Cochrane [1865

1697

TO ANTHEA, WHO MAY COMMAND HIM

ANYTHING

(NEW STYLE)

AM I sincere? I say I dote

On everything that Browning wrote;
I know some bits by heart to quote.
But then She reads him.

I say and is it strictly true?—
How I admire her cockatoo;
Well! in a way of course I do:
But then She feeds him.

And I become, at her command,
The sternest Tory in the land;

The Grand Old Man is far from grand;
But then She states it.

Nay! worse than that, I am so tame,
I once admitted-to my shame-
That football was a brutal game:

Because She hates it.

My taste in Art she hailed with groans,
And I, once charmed with bolder tones,
Now love the yellows of Burne-Jones:
But then She likes them.
My tuneful soul no longer hoards
Stray jewels from the Empire boards;
I revel now in Dvorak's chords:
But then She strikes them.

Our age distinctly cramps a knight;
Yet, though debarred from tilt and fight,
I can admit that black is white,
If She asserts it.

Heroes of old were luckier men
Than I-I venture now and then
To hint-retracting meekly when
She controverts it.

Alfred Cochrane [1865

THE EIGHT-DAY CLOCK

THE days of Bute and Grafton's fame,
Of Chatham's waning prime,

First heard your sounding gong proclaim
Its chronicle of Time;

Old days when Dodd confessed his guilt, When Goldsmith drave his quill,

And genial gossip Horace built

His house on Strawberry Hill.

Now with a grave unmeaning face
You still repeat the tale,

High-towering in your somber case,
Designed by Chippendale;
Without regret for what is gone,
You bid old customs change,
As year by year you travel on
To scenes and voices strange.

The Eight-Day Clock

We might have mingled with the crowd
Of courtiers in this hall,

The fans that swayed, the wigs that bowed,
But you have spoiled it all;

We might have lingered in the train

Of nymphs that Reynolds drew,

Or stared spell-bound in Drury Lane
At Garrick-but for you.

We might in Leicester Fields have swelled
The throng of beaux and cits,

Or listened to the concourse held

Among the Kitcat wits;

Have strolled with Selwyn in Pall Mall,

Arrayed in gorgeous silks,

Or in Great George Street raised a yell
For Liberty and Wilkes.

This is the life which you have known,
Which you have ticked away,
In one unmoved unfaltering tone
That ceased not day by day,
While ever round your dial moved

Your hands from span to span,

Through drowsy hours and hours that proved
Big with the fate of man.

A steady tick for fatal creeds,

For youth on folly bent,

A steady tick for worthy deeds,

And moments wisely spent;

No warning note of emphasis,

No whisper of advice,

To ruined rake or flippant miss,

For coquetry or dice.

You might, I think, have hammered out

With meaning doubly clear,

The midnight of a Vauxhall rout

In Evelina's ear;

1699

Or when the night was almost gone,
You might, the deals between,
Have startled those who looked upon
The cloth when it was green.

But no, in all the vanished years
Down which your wheels have run,
Your message borne to heedless ears
Is one and only one-

No wit of men, no power of kings,

Can stem the overthrow

Wrought by this pendulum that swings Sedately to and fro.

Alfred Cochrane [1865

A PORTRAIT

IN sunny girlhood's vernal life
She caused no small sensation,
But now the modest English wife
To others leaves flirtation.
She's young still, lovely, debonair,
Although sometimes her features
Are clouded by a thought of care
For those two tiny creatures.

Each tiny, toddling, mottled mite
Asserts with voice emphatic,
In lisping accents, "Mite is right,"

Their rule is autocratic:

The song becomes, that charmed mankind, Their musical narcotic,

And baby lips than Love, she'll find,

Are even more despotic.

Soft lullaby when singing there,

And castles ever building, Their destiny she'll carve in air,

Bright with maternal gilding: