A JONGLEUR STRAYED

Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane

by

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

With an Introduction by Oliver Herford

Garden City ————— New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1922 Copyright, 1922, by Doubleday, Page & Company All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian Printed in the United States at The Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y. First Edition

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The writer desires to thank the editors of The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Life, Judge, Leslie's, Munsey's, Ainslee's, Snappy Stories, Live Stories, The Cosmopolitan, and Collier's for their kind permission to reprint the following verses.

He desires also to thank the editor of The New York Evening Post for the involuntary gift of a title.

The Catskills,

June, 1922.

TO

THE LOVE

OF

ANDRÉ AND GWEN

If after times Should pay the least attention to these rhymes, I bid them learn 'Tis not my own heart here That doth so often seem to break and burn— O no such thing!— Nor is it my own dear Always I sing: But, as a scrivener in the market-place, I sit and write for lovers, him or her, Making a song to match each lover's case— A trifling gift sometimes the gods confer!

(After STRATO)

CONTENTS

I

An Echo from Horace Ballade of the Oldest Duel in the World Sorcery The Dryad May is Back Moon-Marketing Two Birthdays Song The Faithful Lover Love's Tenderness Anima Mundi Ballade of the Unchanging Beloved Love's Arithmetic Beauty's Arithmetic The Valley Ballade of the Bees of Trebizond Broken Tryst The Rival The Quarrel Lovers Shadows After Tibullus A Warning Primum Mobile The Last Tryst The Heart on the Sleeve At Her Feet Reliquiae Love's Proud Farwell The Rose Has Left the Garden

II

The Gardens of Adonis Nature the Healer Love Eternal The Loveliest Face and the Wild Rose As in the Woodland I Walk To a Mountain Spring Noon A Rainy Day In the City Country Largesse Morn The Source Autumn The Rose in Winter The Frozen Stream Winter Magic A Lover's Universe To the Golden Wife Buried Treasure The New Husbandman Paths that Wind The Immortal Gods

III

Ballade of Woman The Magic Flower Ballade of Love's Cloister An Old Love Letter Too Late The Door Ajar Chipmunk Ballade of the Dead Face that Never Dies The End of Laughter The Song that Lasts The Broker of Dreams

IV

At the Sign of the Lyre To Madame Jumel To a Beautiful Old Lady To Lucy Hinton; December 19, 1921

V

OTHER MATTERS, SACRED AND PROFANE

The World's Musqueteer: To Marshal Foch We Are With France Satan: 1920 Under Which King? Man, the Destroyer The Long Purposes of God Ballade to a Departing God Ballade of the Absent Guest Tobacco Next Ballade of the Paid Puritan The Overworked Ghost The Valiant Girls Not Sour Grapes Ballade of Reading Bad Books Ballade of the Making of Songs Ballade of Running Away with Life To a Contemner of the Past

INTRODUCTION

One Spring day in London, long before the invention of freak verse and Freudism, I was standing in front of the Cafe Royal in Regent Street when there emerged from its portals the most famous young writer of the day, the Poet about whose latest work "The Book Bills of Narcissus" all literary London was then talking.

Richard Le Gallienne was the first real poet I had ever laid eyes upon in the flesh and it seemed to my rapt senses that this frock-coated young god, with the classic profile and the dark curls curving from the impeccable silk "tile" that surmounted them as curve the acanthus leaves of a Corinthian capital, could be none other than Anacreon's self in modern shape.

I can see Le Gallienne now, as he steps across the sunlit sidewalk and with gesture Mercurian hails the passing Jehu. I can even hear the quick clud of the cab doors as the smartly turning hansome snatches from my view the glass-dimmed face I was not to behold again until years later at the house of a mutual friend in New York.

In another moment the swiftly moving vehicle was dissolved in the glitter of Regent Street and I fell to musing upon the curious interlacement of parts in this picture puzzle of life.

Here was a common Cabby, for the time being combining in himself the several functions of guide-book, chattel-mortgage and writ of habeas corpus on the person of the most popular literary idol of the hour and all for the matter of maybe no more than half a crown, including the pourboire!

Who would not have rejoiced to change places with that cabman! And how might not Pegasus have envied that cab-horse!

* * * * * *

Now after all these years it has come to pass that I am to change places with the cabman.

Perched aloft in the driver's seat of the First Person Singular, it is my proud privilege to crack the prefatory whip and start this newest and best Le Gallienne Vehicle upon its course through the garlanded Via Laurea to the Sign of the Golden Sheaf.

Look at it well, Dear People, before it starts, this golden vehicle of Richard Le Gallienne.

Consider how it is built on the authentic lines of the best workmanship, made to last for generations, maybe for ever.

Take note of its springs so perfectly hung that the Muse may ride in luxurious ease, unjarred by metrical joltings as befits the Queen.

Mark the mirror smooth surface of the lacquer that only time and tireless labour can apply.

Before this Master Coach of Poesy the rattle-jointed Tin Lizzie of Free Verse and the painted jazz wagon of Futurism and the cheap imitation of the Chinese palanquin must turn aside, they have no right of way, these literary road-lice on the garlanded Via Laurea.

With angry thumb, the traffic cop Time will jerk them back to the side streets and byways where they belong, to make way for the Golden Coach of Richard Le Gallienne.

OLIVER HERFORD

I

AN ECHO FROM HORACE

Lusisti est, et edisti, atque bibisti; Tempus abire, tibi est.

Take away the dancing girls, quench the lights, remove Golden cups and garlands sere, all the feast; away Lutes and lyres and Lalage; close the gates, above Write upon the lintel this; Time is done for play! Thou hast had thy fill of love, eaten, drunk; the show Ends at last, 'twas long enough—time it is to go.

Thou hast played—ah! heart, how long!—past all count were they, Girls of gold and ivory, bosomed deep, all snow, Leopard swift, and velvet loined, bronze for hair, wild clay Turning at a touch to flame, tense as a strung bow. Cruel as the circling hawk, tame at last as dove,— Thou hast had thy fill and more than enough of love.

Thou hast eaten; peacock's tongues,—fed thy carp with slaves,— Nests of Asiatic birds, brought from far Cathay, Umbrian boars, and mullet roes snatched from stormy waves; Half thy father's lands have gone one strange meal to pay; For a morsel on thy plate ravished sea and shore; Thou hast eaten—'tis enough, thou shalt eat no more.

Thou hast drunk—how hast thou drunk! mighty vats, whole seas; Vineyards purpling half a world turned to gold thy throat, Falernian, true Massic, the gods' own vintages, Lakes thou hast swallowed deep enough galleys tall to float; Wildness, wonder, wisdom, all, drunkenness divine, All that dreams within the grape, madness too, were thine.

Time it is to go and sleep—draw the curtains close— Tender strings shall lull thee still, mellow flutes be blown, Still the spring shall shower down on thy couch the rose, Still the laurels crown thine head, where thou dreamest alone. Thou didst play, and thou didst eat, thou hast drunken deep, Time at last it is to go, time it is to sleep.

BALLADE OF THE OLDEST DUEL IN THE WORLD

A battered swordsman, slashed and scarred, I scarce had thought to fight again, But love of the old game dies hard, So to't, my lady, if you're fain! I'm scarce the mettle to refrain, I'll ask no quarter from your art— But what if we should both be slain! I fight you, darling, for your heart.

I warn you, though, be on your guard, Nor an old swordsman's craft disdain, He jests at scars—what saith the Bard? Love's wounds are real, and fierce the pain; If we should die of love, we twain! You laugh—en garde then—so we start; Cyrano-like, here's my refrain: I fight you, darling, for your heart.

If compliments I interlard Twixt feint and lunge, you'll not complain Lacking your eyes, the night's un-starred, The rose is beautiful in vain, In vain smells sweet—Rose-in-the-Brain, Dizzying the world—a touch! sweet smart!— Only the envoi doth remain: I fight you, darling, for your heart.

ENVOI

Princess, I'm yours; the rose-red rain Pours from my side—but see! I dart Within your guard—poor pretty stain! I fight you, darling, for your heart.

SORCERY

Face with the forest eyes, And the wayward wild-wood hair, How shall a man be wise, When a girl's so fair; How, with her face once seen, Shall life be as it has been, This many a year?

Beautiful fearful thing! You undulant sorcery! I dare not hear you sing, Dance not for me; The whiteness of your breast, Divinely manifest I must not see.

Too late, thou luring child, Moon matches little moon; I must not be beguiled, With the honied tune: Yet O to lay my head Twixt moon and moon! 'Twas so my sad heart said, Only last June.

THE DRYAD

My dryad hath her hiding place Among ten thousand trees. She flies to cover At step of a lover, And where to find her lovely face Only the woodland bees Ever discover, Bringing her honey From meadows sunny, Cowslip and clover.

Vainly on beech and oak I knock Amid the silent boughs; Then hear her laughter, The moment after, Making of me her laughing-stock Within her hidden house.

The young moon with her wand of pearl Taps on her hidden door, Bids her beauty flower In that woodland bower, All white like a mortal girl, With moonshine hallowed o'er.

Yet were there thrice ten thousand trees To hide her face from me, Not all her fleeing Should 'scape my seeing, Nor all her ambushed sorceries Secure concealment be For her bright being.

Yea! should she by the laddered pine Steal to the stars on high, Her fairy whiteness, Hidden in brightness, Her hiding-place would so out-shine The constellated sky, She could not 'scape the eye Of my pursuing, Nor her fawn-foot lightness Out-speed my wooing.

MAY IS BACK

May is back, and You and I Are at the stream again— The leaves are out, And all about The building birds begin To make a merry din: May is back, and You and I Are at the dream again.

May is back, and You and I Lie in the grass again,— The butterfly Flits painted by, The bee brings sudden fear, Like people talking near; May is back, and You and I Are lad and lass again.

May is back, and You and I Are heart to heart again,— In God's green house We make our vows Of summer love that stays Faithful through winter days; May is back, and You and I Shall never part again.