"No, no!" cried the crowd of his varlets, All shaking their colours and ribbons, The drummers, beginning to beat, Bid the trumpets sound quick for the mounting- For the varlets were flocking round Richard, That moment the drums and the trumpets Pale grew the lips of the vassals, Sir Tracey turned colour, and frown'd, And bade the two rivals together Dismount, and their errors disown. "Ah! this page is a rival for any, And fit to break lance with his king; Let the gallants first meet in the tournay, And afterwards ride for the ring." Dick stood at the feet of the monarch, And bowed till his plume swept the ground; Then, clapping on helmet and feather, Rode into the lists with a bound. Sir Walter was silently waiting, He shone like a statue of gold; Blue threads of big pearls, like a netting, On his helmet a weather-cock glittered, To prove he was ready to ride Any way that the wind might be blowing. Dick lifted his eyes up and smil'd, Oh! it brought the blood hot to my cheek; The king gave the sign, and the trumpet Them fast as the leaves in a tempest, With a shock the tough iron would rive. Fresh lances! "God's blessing on Dicky !"- His spear has flown out of his hand, One start! he is up in a moment; His sword waves a torch in his grasp, And is dinted with hammer and thrust. He reels, and Dick presses him sorely, Then the king took the brightest of diamonds He gave it to bonny Blue Feather, Then the varlets bore off their Sir Walter, The jewels beat out of his chains, His armour all batter'd and dusty, And they caught his mad froth-covered charger, I stuck his blue feather of honour THE TOWN GATE. IN the dusky summer evenings, As groups, through the twilight breaking, Soon, slowly through the dusky gate, To the boys with the palmi-leaf crown, Chanting the songs of Zion, To welcome the stately town. The old men, tired and travel-worn, They sang one hymn together, In the dark midnights of winter, "Once they were stricken down,"Spurring, with wild and staring eyes, Into the stately town. In the merry April mornings, One bawls out strings of ballads, With a blaze of cloak and feather, Rode knights unto the tournay, Trampling over the down, Driven before the pikemen, Their gashed heads bending down, In the dreadful year of famine, When bells shook every steeple, And flags deck'd every roof; In a balmy noon of summer, His stern eyes looking down, THE JESTER'S SERMON. THE Jester shook his hood and bells, and leaped upon a chair, The page played with the heron's plume, the steward with his chain, And waving hand, he struck the desk, and frowned like one perplexed. "Dear sinners all," the fool began, "man's life is but a jest, Let no man haloo he is safe till he is through the wood; The friar, preaching, cursed the thief (the pudding in his sleeve). When the hungry curate licks the knife there's not much for the clerk; When the pilot, turning pale and sick, looks up the storm grows dark." Then loud they laughed, the fat cook's tears ran down into the pan; The steward shook, that he was forced to drop the brimming can; And then again the women screamed, and every stag-hound bayed-And why? because the motley fool so wise a sermon made! EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.* "OH !" exclaims the reader," this is an antiquarian article; we need not cut the leaves; we have enough to do in this nineteenth century to read the leading article in the Times; or, if we want poetry, there are Tennyson and Longfellow, without digging up the mouldering crudities of the reign of Edward III. We have no sympathy with the plodding Dryasdust, the laudator temporis acti, who values a coin not for its intrinsic worth, but for the rust with which it is overlaid." By your leave, gentle reader, you mistake us altogether. We are not Dryasdust; we have as little sympathy as you with the mere antiquary; we never quarrel with a Victoria sovereign fresh from the mint; but if we happen to meet with a Rose Noble of the reign of Edward III., the quaintness of the image and superscription does not prevent us from recognizing the ring of the sterling metal upon which they are stamped. If you never get beyond the large type in the Times, or Tennyson's last, we cannot expect to enlist your sympathies in the poetry of a century ago; even Dryden must be a sealed book to you. But if you have at all profited by the instruction in the true principles of taste which we have been ever careful to provide for your improvement, you will introduce yourself to, and cultivate the closest intimacy with, genial, joyous, humorous, tender, old Geoffrey Chaucer. It was in the days of our undergraduateship that we first became acquainted with him. We had made our escape for the vacation, from those long stories that Euclid tells about triangles and rhomboids, when, in the library of a country house, where we were on a visit, we happened to meet with Speght's black-lettered edition of 1604. The quaint wood-cut on the title-page, in which a knight is represented charging against the walls of a castle among lilies as high as the battlements, arrested our attention. We read a few lines of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, saying to ourself, "I wonder what strange stuff is this!" But it ended in our reading the folio through, in spite of all the difiiculties of black-letter, corrupt text, and incorrect punctuation. And ever since that time, when a winter evening hangs heavily on our hands; or when the still, sultry air of a summer's day invites to sit under the old medlartree on the grass-plot before our study window; when the air is loaded with the perfume of the bean-fields, and the joyous laugh of the troop of peasant-girls who are weeding in the wheat comes mellowed by the distance; or the harvest-horn is heard dismissing the reapers from their toil, we take down the old volume, and dream over the sweet pictures of English country-life and home-scenery-the stately dances of knights and ladies, or the gorgeous pageants and banquets of feudal magnificence, which the enchanter raises before our imagination with such life-like reality. Don't call us Dryasdust for loving old Geoffrey. It is because his pictures are so fresh-it is because the men and women who move before us on his page are the very men and women whom we have seen in the flesh in this year of our Lord, 1856— whom we travel with in the rail-road carriage-whom we sit under at the proprietary chapel, or sit beside at the market-ordinary of the country town to which we resort on a Saturday-who do our little law-business for us in Westminster-hall, or act the lady-bountiful in our parish, that they never fail to secure our attention and command our sympathy, whether their mood be humourous or pathetic. There is a healthy and genial tone about Chaucer's poetry and philosophy which disposes us to be pleased with the world in which we live ; and we are inclined to think that in this he caught the real aspect of nature. Discontent and misanthropy are the offspring of over-civilization. Chaucer always prefers the sunny side of nature. He delights in May mornings, gazes with rapture on the sloping lawns, the stately oaks, the daisy spreading its petals to the sun, the Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Edited by Robert Bell. 8 vols. foolscap octavo. J. W. Parker and Son: London, 1854-5. |