NOTAS

[1]. When reds and blues were indeed red and blue.

[2]. No harm! It was not my fault/ If you never turned your eye’s tail up/ As I shook upon E in alt,/ Or ran the chromatic scale up.

[3]. See, how she looks now, dressed/ In a sledging cap and vest!/ ’Tis a huge fur cloak–/ Like a reindeer’s yoke/ Falls the lappet along the breast:/ Sleeves for her arms to rest,/ Or to hang, as my Love likes best.

[4]. There was a bad poet named Clough/ Whom his friends all united to puff./ But the public, though dull,/ Has not quite such a skull/ As belongs to believers in Clough.

[5]. Blood fell like dew beneath his sunrise–sooth,/ But glittered dew-like in the covenanted/ And high-rayed light. He was a despot–granted,/ But the aύτóϛ of his autocratic mouth/ Said «Yea» i’ the people’s French! He magnified/ The image of the freedom he denied.

[6]. The racks of the earth and the rods/ Are weak as the foam on the sands;/ The heart is the prey for the gods,/ Who crucify hearts, not hands.

[7]. Picture frames/ White through the worn gilt, mirror-sconces chipped,/ Bronze angel-heads once knobs attached to chests,/ (Handled when ancient dames chose forth brocade)/ Modern chalk drawings, studies from the nude,/ Samples of stone, jet, breccia, porphyry/ Polished and rough, sundry amazing busts/ In baked earth, (broken, Providence be praised!)/ A wreck of tapestry proudly-purposed web/ When reds and blues were indeed red and blue/ Now offer’d as a mat to save bare feet/ (Since carpets constitute a cruel cost)./ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ./ Vulgarised Horace for the use of schools,/ «The Life, Death, Miracles of Saint Somebody,/ Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death and Life»,/ With this, one glance at the lettered back of which,/ And «Stall», cried I; a lira made it mine.

[8]. Each life unfulfilled, you see;/ It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:/ We have not sighed deep, laughed free./ Starved, feasted, despaired, –been happy.

[9]. Meek, hitherto un-Murrayed bathing-places,/ Best loved of sea-coast-nook-full Normandy!

[10]. Long after the last of your number/ Has ceased my front-court to encumber/ While, treading down rose and ranunculus,/ You Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle-us!/ Troop, all of you man or homunculus/ Quick march! for Xanthippe, my housemaid,/ If once on your pates she a souse made/ With what, pan or pot, bowl or skoramis/ First comes to her hand –things were more amiss!/ I would not for worlds be your place in–/ Recipient of slops from the basin!/ You, Jack-in-the-Green, leaf-and-twiggishness/ Wont’t save a dry thread on your priggishness!

[11]. Hush, I pray you!/ What if this friend happen to be –God.

[12]. Lo! ’Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!/ ’Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,/ Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month/ One little mess of whelks, so he may ’scape!

[13]. And clipt of his wings in Paris square,/ They bring him now to be burned alive./ (And wanteth there grace of lute and clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth.)–/ We bring John now to be burned alive.

[14]. Up jumped Tokay on our table,/ Like a pigmy castle-warder,/ Dwarfish to see, but stout and able,/ Arms and accoutrements all in order;/ And fierce looked North, then, wheeling South/ Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth,/ Cocked his flap-hat with the tosspot-feather,/ Twisted his thumb in his red moustache,/ Jingled his huge brass spurs together,/ Tightened his waist with its Buda shash,/ And then, with an impudence nougth could abash,/ Shruggerd his hump-shoulder, to tell the beholder,/ For twenty such knaves he would laugh but the bolder:/ And so, with his sword-hilt gallantly jutting,/ And dexter-hand on his hounch abutting,/ Went the little man, Sir Ausbruch, strutting!

[15]. Irks care the crop-full bird, frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

[16]. And the good man, the clergyman, has told me words of peace.

[17]. From the lilies and languors of virtue/ To the raptures and roses of vice,

[18]. Or ride with the reckless seraphim on the rim of a redmaned star.

[19]. Will I widem thee out till thou turnest/ From Margaret Minnikin mou’ by God’s grace,/ To Muckle-mouth Meg in good earnest.

[20]. He is either himself a devil frae hell,/ Or else his mother a witch maun be;/ I wadna have ridden that wan water/ For a’ the gowd in Christentie.

[21]. There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer stream,/ And the nightingale sings in it all the nigh long.

[22]. They were purple of raiment and golden/ Filled full of thee, fiery with wine/ Thy lovers in haunts unbeholden,/ In marvelous chambers of thine.

[23]. I –«next poet». No, my hearties/ I nor am, nor fain would be!/ Choose your chiefs and pick your parties,/ No one soul revolt to me!/ . . . . . . . . . . ./ Which of you did I enable/ One to sleep inside my breast,/ There to catalogue and label/ What I like least, what love best,/ Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,/ Seek and shun, respect, deride,/ Who has right to make a rout of/ Rarities he found inside?

[24]. Thou art the highest, and most human too.

[25]. We needs must love the highest when we see it.

[26]. High’s human; man loves best, best visible.

[27]. Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!/ Down it dips, gone like a rocket./ What, you want, do you, to come unawares,/ Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers/ And find a poor devil has ended his cares/ At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs?/ Do I carry the moon in my pocket?

[28]. What must I deem then that thou dreamest to find/ Disjected bones adrift upon the stair/ Thou sweepest clean, or that thou deemest that I/ Pouch in my wallet the vice-regal sun?

[29]. Praise the generous gods for giving,/ In this world of sin and strife,/ With some little time for living,/ Unto each the joy of life.

[30]. And pitch down his basket before us/ All trembling alive/ With pink and grey jellies, your sea-fruit;/ You touch the strange lumps,/ And mouths gape there, eyes open, all manner/ Of horns and of humps,/ Which only the fisher looks grave at.

[31]. The Name comes close behind a stomach-cyst,/ The simplest of creations, just a sac/ That’s mouth, heart, legs, and belly at once, yet lives/ And feels, and could do neither, we conclude,/ If simplified still further one degree. (Sludge)

[32]. Job. Cap. 41, 5.

[33]. The wolf, fox, bear, and monkey,/ By piping advice in one key–/ That his pipe should play a prelude/ To something heaven-tinged not hell-hued,/ Something not harsh but docile,/ Man-liquid, not man-fossil.

[34]. Give your first groan –compunction’s at work;/ And soft! From a Jew you mount to a Turk./ Lo, Micah –the self-same beard on chin/ He was four times already converted in!

[35]. And, whether they pipe us free, fróm rats or fróm mice,/ If we’ve promised them aught, let us keep our promise!

[36]. Hobbs hints blue –straight he turtle eats./ Nobbs prints blue –claret crowns hip cup./ Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats–/ Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?/ What porridge had John Keats?

[37]. What then? «You lie» and doormat below stairs/ Takes bump from back.

[38]. If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk/ Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents/ Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents/ In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk/ All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk/ Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

[39]. When lovely woman stoops to folly/ And finds too late that men betray,/ What charm can soothe her melancholy?/ What art can wash her guilt away?

[40]. Ye banks and braers o’ bonnie Doon/ How can ye bloom sae fair?/ How can ye chant, ye little birds,/ And I sae fu’ of care?/ Thou’ll break my heart, thou bonny bird,/ That sings upon the bough,/ Thou minds me of the happy days/ When my fause Love was true.

[41]. As I fear, sir, he sometimes used to do/ Before I found the useful book that knows.

[42]. Now for it, then! Will you believe me, though?/ You’ve heard what I confess: I don’t unsay/ A single word: I cheated when I could,/ Rapped with my toe-joints, set sham hands at work,/ Wrote down names weak in sympathetic ink./ Rubbed odic lights with ends of phosphor-match,/ And all the rest; believe that: believe this,/ By the same token, though it seem to set/ The crooked straight again, unsay the said,/ Stick up what I’ve knocked down; I can’t help that,/ It’s truth! I somehow vomit truth to-day./ This trade of mine –I don’t know, can’t be sure/ But there was something in it, tricks and all!

[43]. R-r-r. You brute-beats and blackguard! Cowardly scamp!/ I only wish I dared burn down the house/ And spoil your sniggering!

[44]. For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke.

[45]. Just when we are safest there’s a sunset-touch,/ A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death/ A chorus ending from Euripides,–/ And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears/ As old and new at once as Nature’s self,/ To rap and knock and enter in our soul,/ Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring./ Round the ancient idol, on his base again,–/ The grand Perhaps!