Richard Savage

By J. M. Barrie and H. B. Marriott Watson, Criterion Theatre, April 16, 1891.

To other boards for pun and song and dance!
Our purpose is an essay in romance:
An old-world story where such old-world facts
As hate and love and death, through four swift acts -
Not without gleams and glances, hints and cues,
From the dear bright eyes of the Comic Muse! -
So shine and sound that, as we fondly deem,
They may persuade you to accept our dream:
Our own invention, mainly - though we take,
Somewhat for art but most for interest's sake
One for our hero who goes wandering still
In the long shadow of PARNASSUS HILL;
Scarce within eyeshot; but his tragic shade
Compels that recognition due be made,
When he comes knocking at the student's door,
Something as poet, if as blackguard more.

Poet and blackguard.    Of the first - how much?
As to the second, in quite perfect touch
With folly and sorrow, even shame and crime,
He lived the grief and wonder of his time!
Marked for reproaches from his life's beginning;
Extremely sinned against as well as sinning;
Hack, spendthrift, starveling, duellist in turn;
Too cross to cherish yet too fierce to spurn;
Begrimed with ink or brave with wine and blood;
Spirit of fire and manikin of mud;
Now shining clear, now fain to starve and skulk;
Star of the cellar, pensioner of the bulk;
At once the child of passion and the slave;
Brawling his way to an unhonoured grave -
That was DICK SAVAGE!    Yet, ere his ghost we raise
For these more decent and less desperate days,
It may be well and seemly to reflect
That, howbeit of so prodigal a sect,
Since it was his to call until the end
Our greatest, wisest Englishman his friend,
'Twere all-too fatuous if we cursed and scorned
The strange, wild creature JOHNSON loved and mourned.

Nature is but the oyster - Art's the pearl:
Our DICK is neither sycophant nor churl.
Not as he was but as he might have been
Had the Unkind Gods been poets of the scene,
Fired with our fancy, shaped and tricked anew
To touch your hearts with love, your eyes with rue,
He stands or falls, ere he these boards depart,
Not as dead Nature but as living Art.

William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley was an English poet, critic, and editor. Despite battling tuberculosis from a young age, Henley is best known for his resilience and strength, qualities exemplified in his most famous poem, 'Invictus'. Henley was also a notable figure in the literary circles of his time, befriending and influencing key writers, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, who modeled the character Long John Silver after him.

William Ernest Henley

Rhymes And Rhythms - Prologue

William Ernest Henley, Simple Poetry

Dedication - To My Wife

William Ernest Henley, Simple Poetry

Here They Trysted, Here They Strayed

William Ernest Henley, Simple Poetry

Double Ballade Of The Nothingness Of Things

William Ernest Henley, Simple Poetry

English

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Address. For the benefit of William Dunlap.

(Spoken by Mrs. Sharpe)




What gay assemblage greets my wondering sight!
What scene of splendor--conjured here to-night!
What voices murmur, and what glances gleam!
Sure 'tis some flattering unsubstantial dream.
The house is crowded--everybody's here
For beauty famous, or to science dear;
Doctors and lawyers, judges, belles, and beaux,
Poets and painters--and Heaven only knows
Whom else beside!--And see, gay ladies sit
Lighting with smiles that fearful place, the pit--
(A fairy change--ah, pray continue it.)
Gray heads are here too, listening to my rhymes,
Full of the spirit of departed times;
Grave men and studious, strangers to my sight,
All gather round me on this brilliant night.
And welcome are ye all.    Not now ye come
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A Familiar Epistle

To * * Esq. of * * with a Life of the late Ingenious Mr. W M. Hogarth.


Dear Cosmopolitan,--I know
I should address you a Rondeau,
Or else announce what I've to say
At least en Ballade fratrisée;
But No: for once I leave Gymnasticks,
And take to simple Hudibrasticks;
Why should I choose another Way,
When this was good enough for GAY?

You love, my FRIEND, with me, I think,
That Age of Lustre and of Link;
Of Chelsea China and long "s"es,
Of Bag-wigs and of flowered Dresses;
That Age of Folly and of Cards,
Of Hackney Chairs and Hackney Bards;
--No H--LTS, no K--G--N P--LS were then
Dispensing Competence to Men;
The gentle Trade was left to Churls,
Your frowsy TONSONS and your CURLLS;
Mere Wolves in Ambush to attack
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Henry Austin Dobson

Fragment Inscribed To The Right Hon. C.J. Fox.

    How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite;
    How virtue and vice blend their black and their white;
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    Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,
    I sing: if these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
    I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle!

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    At once may illustrate and honour my story.

    Thou first of our orators, first of our wits;
    Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits;
    With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong,
    No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong;
    With passions so potent, and fancies so bright,
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Horace, Book II, Ode I, Paraphrased; Addressed To Richard Steele, Esq.

Dick, thou'rt resolved, as I am told,
Some strange arcana to unfold,
And with the help of Buckley's[1] pen,
To vamp the good old cause again:
Which thou (such Burnet's shrewd advice is)
Must furbish up, and nickname Crisis.
Thou pompously wilt let us know
What all the world knew long ago,
(E'er since Sir William Gore was mayor,
And Harley fill'd the commons' chair,)
That we a German prince must own,
When Anne for Heaven resigns her throne.
But, more than that, thou'lt keep a rout,
With - who is in - and who is out;
Thou'lt rail devoutly at the peace,
And all its secret causes trace,
The bucket-play 'twixt Whigs and Tories,
Their ups and downs, with fifty stories
Of tricks the Lord of Oxford knows,
And errors of our plenipoes.
Thou'lt tell o...

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To Barry Cornwall

Barry! your spirit long ago
Has haunted me; at last I know
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Ne'er rested on poetic ground.
But, Barry Cornwall! by what right
Wring you my breast and dim my sight,
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My poor old hand could do as much?
No other in these later times
Has bound me in so potent rhymes.
I have observed the curious dress
And jewelry of brave Queen Bess,
But always found some o'ercharged thing,
Some flaw in even the brightest ring,
Admiring in her men of war,
A rich but too argute guitar.
Our foremost now are more prolix,
And scrape with three-fell fiddlesticks,
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Are slow to turn as crocodiles.
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An Essay on Criticism

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    All ether trembles when the pebble falls,
    And a light word may ring in starry halls.
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