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Title: "There Stands A City"
Author: Charles Stuart Calverley [
More Titles by Calverley]
"There Stands a City"
INGOLDSBY.
Year by year do Beauty's daughters,
In the sweetest gloves and shawls,
Troop to taste the Chattenham waters,
And adorn the Chattenham balls.
'Nulla non donanda lauru'
Is that city: you could not,
Placing England's map before you,
Light on a more favoured spot.
If no clear translucent river
Winds 'neath willow-shaded paths,
"Children and adults" may shiver
All day in "Chalybeate baths:"
If "the inimitable Fechter"
Never brings the gallery down,
Constantly "the Great Protector"
There "rejects the British crown:"
And on every side the painter
Looks on wooded vale and plain
And on fair hills, faint and fainter
Outlined as they near the main.
There I met with him, my chosen
Friend--the 'long' but not 'stern swell,' {1}
Faultless in his hats and hosen,
Whom the Johnian lawns know well:-
Oh my comrade, ever valued!
Still I see your festive face;
Hear you humming of "the gal you'd
Left behind" in massive bass:
See you sit with that composure
On the eeliest of hacks,
That the novice would suppose your
Manly limbs encased in wax:
Or anon,--when evening lent her
Tranquil light to hill and vale, -
Urge, towards the table's centre,
With unerring hand, the squail.
Ah delectablest of summers!
How my heart--that "muffled drum"
Which ignores the aid of drummers -
Beats, as back thy memories come!
Oh, among the dancers peerless,
Fleet of foot, and soft of eye!
Need I say to you that cheerless
Must my days be till I die?
At my side she mashed the fragrant
Strawberry; lashes soft as silk
Drooped o'er saddened eyes, when vagrant
Gnats sought watery graves in milk:
Then we danced, we walked together;
Talked--no doubt on trivial topics;
Such as Blondin, or the weather,
Which "recalled us to the tropics."
But--oh! in the deuxtemps peerless,
Fleet of foot, and soft of eye! -
Once more I repeat, that cheerless
Shall my days be till I die.
And the lean and hungry raven,
As he picks my bones, will start
To observe 'M. N.' engraven
Neatly on my blighted heart.
Footnote:
{1}
"The kites know well the long stern swell
That bids the Romans close."--MACAULAY.
[The end]
Charles Stuart Calverley's poem: "There Stands A City"
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