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ou're my friend--What a thing friendship is, world without end!How it gives the heart and soul a stir-upAs if somebody broached you a glorious runlet,And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit,Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup,Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids--Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids; 840Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs,Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubtsWhether to run on or stop short, and guaranteesAge is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease.I have seen my little lady once more,Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it,For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before;I always wanted to make a clean breast of it:And now it is made-why, my heart's blood, that went trickle,Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets, 850Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,And genially floats me about the giblets. I'll tell you what I intend to do:I must see this fellow his sad life through--He is our Duke, after all,And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall.My father was born here, and I inheritHis fame, a chain he bound his son with;Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it,But there's no mine to blow up and get done with: 860So, I must stay till the end of the chapter.For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter,Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on,Some day or other, his head in a morionAnd breast in a hauberk, his heels he'll kick up,Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup.And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust,And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a blue crust,Then I shall scrape together my earnings;For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes, 870And our children all went the way of the roses:It's a long lane that knows no turnings.One needs but little tackle to travel in;So, just one stout cloak shall I indue:And for a staff, what beats the javelinWith which his boars my father pinned you?And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful. 880What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:When we mind labour, then only, we're too old--What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees,(Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil)I hope to get safely out of the turmoilAnd arrive one day at the land of the Gipsies,And find my lady, or hear the last news of herFrom some old thief and son of Lucifer, 890His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,Sunburned all over like an AEthiop.And when my Cotnar begins to operateAnd the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate,And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent,I shall drop in with--as if by accident--"You never knew, then, how it all ended,What fortune good or bad attendedThe little lady your Queen befriended?"--And when that's told me, what's remaining? 900This world's too hard for my explaining.The same wise judge of matters equineWho still preferred some slim four-year-oldTo the big-boned stock of mighty BeroldAnd, for strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine,He also must be such a lady's scorner!Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau:Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw.--So, I shall find out some snug cornerUnder a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight, 910Turn myself round and bid the world good night;And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet blowingWakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)To a world where will be no further throwingPearls before swine that can't value them. Amen! NOTES:"The Flight of the Duchess." A story of the triumph of afree and loving life over a cold and conventional one.The duke's huntsman frees his mind to his friend as to hispart in the escape of the gladsome, ardent young duchessfrom the blighting yoke of a husband whose life consistedin imitating defunct mediaeval customs. An old gipsy isthe agency that awakens her to the joy and freedom oflove. Her mystic chant and charm claim the duchess asthe true heir of gipsy blood, thrill her with life, half-hypnotizethe huntsman, too, and seem to transform the gipsycrone herself into an Eastern queen. He helps them off,and looks for no better future, when the duke's death releaseshim, than to travel to the land of the gipsies and hear the lastnews of his lady. The poem grew from the fancies aroused in the poet'sheart by the snatch of a woman's song he overheard whena boy--"Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!" A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL,
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