At The Sign Of The Lyre

(To the Memory of Austin Dobson)

Master of the lyric inn
Where the rarer sort so long
Drew the rein, to 'scape the din
Of the cymbal and the gong,
Topers of the classic bin, -
Oporto, sherris and tokay,
Muscatel, and beaujolais -
Conning some old Book of Airs,
Lolling in their Queen Anne chairs -
Catch or glee or madrigal,
Writ for viol or virginal;
Or from France some courtly tune,
Gavotte, ridotto, rigadoon;
(Watteau and the rising moon);
Ballade, rondeau, triolet,
Villanelle or virelay,
Wistful of a statelier day,
Gallant, delicate, desire:
Where the Sign swings of the Lyre,
Garlands droop above the door,
Thou, dear Master, art no more.

Lo! about thy portals throng
Sorrowing shapes that loved thy song:
Taste and Elegance are there,
The modish Muses of Mayfair,
Wit, Distinction, Form and Style,
Humour, too, with tear and smile.

Fashion sends her butterflies -
Pretty laces to their eyes,
Ladies from St. James's there
Step out from the sedan chair;
Wigged and scented dandies too
Tristely wear their sprigs of rue;
Country squires are in the crowd,
And little Phyllida sobs aloud.

Then stately shades I seem to see,
Master, to companion thee;
Horace and Fielding here are come
To bid thee to Elysium.
Last comes one all golden: Fame
Calls thee, Master, by thy name,
On thy brow the laurel lays,
Whispers low - "In After Days."

Richard Le Gallienne

Richard Le Gallienne was an English author and poet born on January 20, 1866. Known for his lyrical poetry, he was a key figure in the literary circles of the fin de siècle. He contributed to the literary magazine 'The Yellow Book' and was involved with the Rhymers' Club, an influential group of London-based poets. His works often explored themes of beauty, love, and nature. His influence extended to both sides of the Atlantic, and he spent the latter part of his life in the United States, where he continued to write until his death on September 15, 1947.

Richard Le Gallienne

Love's Landmarks

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

To A Beautiful Old Lady

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

The Animalcule On Man

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

Ballade Of The Making Of Songs

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Alfred Tennyson

(Westminster, October 12, 1892)

Great man of song, whose glorious laurelled head
    Within the lap of death sleeps well at last,
Down the dark road, seeking the deathless dead,
    Thy faithful, fearless, shining soul hath passed.

Fame blows his silver trumpet o'er thy sleep,
    And Love stands broken by thy lonely lyre;
So pure the fire God gave this clay to keep,
    The clay must still seem holy for the fire.

Poor dupes of sense, we deem the close-shut eye,
    So faithful servant of his golden tongue,
Still holds the hoarded lights of earth and sky,
    We deem the mouth still full of sleeping song.

We mourn as though the great good song he gave
    Passed with the singer's own informing breath:
Ah, golden book, for thee there is no gr...

Richard Le Gallienne

Robert Louis Stevenson - An Elegy

High on his Patmos of the Southern Seas
Our northern dreamer sleeps,
Strange stars above him, and above his grave
Strange leaves and wings their tropic splendours wave,
While, far beneath, mile after shimmering mile,
The great Pacific, with its faery deeps,
Smiles all day long its silken secret smile.

Son of a race nomadic, finding still
Its home in regions furthest from its home,
Ranging untired the borders of the world,
And resting but to roam;
Loved of his land, and making all his boast
The birthright of the blood from which he came,
Heir to those lights that guard the Scottish coast,
And caring only for a filial fame;
Proud, if a poet, he was Scotsman most,
And bore a Scottish name.

Death, that long sought our poet, finds at last,
Dea...

Richard Le Gallienne

The Lyre Of Anacreon

The minstrel of the classic lay
Of love and wine who sings
Still found the fingers run astray
That touched the rebel strings.

Of Cadmus he would fain have sung,
Of Atreus and his line;
But all the jocund echoes rung
With songs of love and wine.

Ah, brothers! I would fain have caught
Some fresher fancy's gleam;
My truant accents find, unsought,
The old familiar theme.

Love, Love! but not the sportive child
With shaft and twanging bow,
Whose random arrows drove us wild
Some threescore years ago;

Not Eros, with his joyous laugh,
The urchin blind and bare,
But Love, with spectacles and staff,
And scanty, silvered hair.

Our heads with frosted locks are white,
Our roofs are thatched with snow,
But red, in c...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Elegi Musarum

(AFTER W. W.)

[To Mr. St. Loe Strachey.]

Dawn of the year that emerges, a fine and ebullient Phnix,
    Forth from the cinders of Self, out of the ash of the Past;
Year that discovers my Muse in the thick of purpureal sonnets,
    Slating diplomacy's sloth, blushing for 'Abdul the d----d';
Year that in guise of a herald declaring the close of the tourney
    Clears the redoubtable lists hot with the Battle of Bays;
Binds on the brows of the Tory, the highly respectable Austin,
    Laurels that Phbus of old wore on the top of his tuft;

Leaving the locks of the hydra, of Bodley the numerous-headed,
    Clean as the chin of a boy, bare as a babe in a bath;
Year that, I see in the vista the principal verb of the sentence
    Loom as a deeply-desired bride tha...

Owen Seaman

To The Reader

Art was a palace once, things great and fair,
And strong and holy, found a temple there:
Now 'tis a lazar-house of leprous men.
O shall me hear an English song again!
Still English larks mount in the merry morn,
An English May still brings an English thorn,
Still English daisies up and down the grass,
Still English love for English lad and lass -
Yet youngsters blush to sing an English song!

Thou nightingale that for six hundred years
Sang to the world - O art thou husht at last!
For, not of thee this new voice in our ears,
Music of France that once was of the spheres;
And not of thee these strange green flowers that spring
From daisy roots and seemed to bear a sting.

Thou Helicon of numbers 'undefiled,'
Forgive that 'neath the sha...

Richard Le Gallienne

André Le Chapelain.
(Clerk of Love, 1170.)

His Plaint To Venus Of The Coming Years.

"Plus ne suis ce que j'ay esté
Et ne le sçaurois jamais estre;
Mon beau printemps et mon esté
Ont fait le saut par la fenestre."

Queen Venus, round whose feet,
To tend thy sacred fire,
With service bitter-sweet
Nor youths nor maidens tire;--
Goddess, whose bounties be
Large as the un-oared sea;--

Mother, whose eldest born
First stirred his stammering tongue,
In the world's youngest morn,
When the first daisies sprung:--
Whose last, when Time shall die,
In the same grave shall lie:--

Hear thou one suppliant more!
Must I, thy Bard, grow old,
Bent, with the temples frore,
Not jocund be nor bold,
To tune for folk in May
Ballad and ...
Henry Austin Dobson