Charles Stuart Calverley

Charles Stuart Calverley was an English poet and wit, known for his parodies and skillfully light verse. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, he became immensely popular for his humorous poems. His notable works include 'Verses and Translations' and 'Fly Leaves.' Calverley's light-hearted approach and playful use of classical references made him a celebrated figure in Victorian literary circles.

December 22, 1831

February 17, 1884

English

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From Theocritus.

IDYLL. VII.


Scarce midway were we yet, nor yet descried
The stone that hides what once was Brasidas:
When there drew near a wayfarer from Crete,
Young Lycidas, the Muses' votary.
The horned herd was his care: a glance might tell
So much: for every inch a herdsman he.
Slung o'er his shoulder was a ruddy hide
Torn from a he-goat, shaggy, tangle-haired,
That reeked of rennet yet: a broad belt clasped
A patched cloak round his breast, and for a staff
A gnarled wild-olive bough his right hand bore.
Soon with a quiet smile he spoke - his eye
Twinkled, and laughter sat upon his lip:
"And whither ploddest thou thy weary way
Beneath the noontide sun, Simichides?
For now the lizard sleeps upon the wall,
The crested lark hath closed his wandering wing.

Charles Stuart Calverley

Gemini And Virgo.

Some vast amount of years ago,
Ere all my youth had vanished from me,
A boy it was my lot to know,
Whom his familiar friends called Tommy.

I love to gaze upon a child;
A young bud bursting into blossom;
Artless, as Eve yet unbeguiled,
And agile as a young opossum:

And such was he. A calm-browed lad,
Yet mad, at moments, as a hatter:
Why hatters as a race are mad
I never knew, nor does it matter.

He was what nurses call a 'limb;'
One of those small misguided creatures,
Who, though their intellects are dim,
Are one too many for their teachers:

And, if you asked of him to say
What twice 10 was, or 3 times 7,
He'd glance (in quite a placid way)
From heaven to earth, from earth to heaven:

And smile, and look politel...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Hic Vir, Hic Est.

Often, when o'er tree and turret,
Eve a dying radiance flings,
By that ancient pile I linger
Known familiarly as "King's."
And the ghosts of days departed
Rise, and in my burning breast
All the undergraduate wakens,
And my spirit is at rest.

What, but a revolting fiction,
Seems the actual result
Of the Census's enquiries
Made upon the 15th ult.?
Still my soul is in its boyhood;
Nor of year or changes recks.
Though my scalp is almost hairless,
And my figure grows convex.

Backward moves the kindly dial;
And I'm numbered once again
With those noblest of their species
Called emphatically 'Men':
Loaf, as I have loafed aforetime,
Through the streets, with tranquil mind,
And a long-backed fancy-mongrel
Trailing casually ...

Charles Stuart Calverley

In Memoriam. - Cvi.

The time admits not flowers or leaves
To deck the banquet. Fiercely flies
The blast of North and East, and ice
Makes daggers at the sharpen'd eaves,

And bristles all the brakes and thorns
To yon hard crescent, as she hangs
Above the wood which grides and clangs
Its leafless ribs and iron horns

Together, in the drifts that pass,
To darken on the rolling brine
That breaks the coast. But fetch the wine,
Arrange the board and brim the glass;

Bring in great logs and let them lie,
To make a solid core of heat;
Be cheerful-minded, talk and treat
Of all things ev'n as he were by:

We keep the day with festal cheer,
With books and music. Surely we
Will drink to him whate'er he be,
And sing the songs he loved to hear.

Charles Stuart Calverley

In The Gloaming.

In the Gloaming to be roaming, where the crested waves are foaming,
And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet;
When the Gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavour
To discover - but whatever were the hour, it would be sweet.

"To their feet," I say, for Leech's sketch indisputably teaches
That the mermaids of our beaches do not end in ugly tails,
Nor have homes among the corals; but are shod with neat balmorals,
An arrangement no one quarrels with, as many might with scales.

Sweet to roam beneath a shady cliff, of course with some young lady,
Lalage, Neaera, Haidee, or Elaine, or Mary Ann:
Love, you dear delusive dream, you! Very sweet your victims deem you,
When, heard only by the seamew, they talk all the stuff one can.

Sweet to has...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Isabel.

Now o'er the landscape crowd the deepening shades,
And the shut lily cradles not the bee;
The red deer couches in the forest glades,
And faint the echoes of the slumberous sea:
And ere I rest, one prayer I'll breathe for thee,
The sweet Egeria of my lonely dreams:
Lady, forgive, that ever upon me
Thoughts of thee linger, as the soft starbeams
Linger on Merlin's rock, or dark Sabrina's streams.

On gray Pilatus once we loved to stray,
And watch far off the glimmering roselight break
O'er the dim mountain-peaks, ere yet one ray
Pierced the deep bosom of the mist-clad lake.
Oh! who felt not new life within him wake,
And his pulse quicken, and his spirit burn -
(Save one we wot of, whom the cold DID make
Feel "shooting pains in every joint in turn,")
Whe...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Juno's Speech. - Translations From Horace.

OD. iii. 3.


The just man's single-purposed mind
Not furious mobs that prompt to ill
May move, nor kings' frowns shake his will
Which is as rock; not warrior-winds

That keep the seas in wild unrest;
Nor bolt by Jove's own finger hurled:
The fragments of a shivered world
Would crash round him still self-possest.

Jove's wandering son reached, thus endowed,
The fiery bastions of the skies;
Thus Pollux; with them Caesar lies
Beside his nectar, radiant-browed.

For this rewarded, tiger-drawn
Rode Bacchus, reining necks before
Untamed; for this War's horses bore
Quirinus up from Acheron,

When in heav'n's conclave Juno said,
Thrice welcomed: "Troy is in the dust;
Troy, by a judge accursed, unjust,
And that strange...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Laura Matilda's Dirge.

FROM 'REJECTED ADDRESSES.'



Balmy Zephyrs, lightly flitting,
Shade me with your azure wing;
On Parnassus' summit sitting,
Aid me, Clio, while I sing.

Softly slept the dome of Drury
O'er the empyreal crest,
When Alecto's sister-fury
Softly slumb'ring sunk to rest.

Lo! from Lemnos limping lamely,
Lags the lowly Lord of Fire,
Cytherea yielding tamely
To the Cyclops dark and dire.

Clouds of amber, dreams of gladness,
Dulcet joys and sports of youth,
Soon must yield to haughty sadness;
Mercy holds the veil to Truth.

See Erostratas the second
Fires again Diana's fane;
By the Fates from Orcus beckon'd,
Clouds envelop Drury Lane.

Where is Cupid's crimson motion?
Billowy ecstasy of woe,
B...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Leaves Have Their Time To Fall.

FELICIA HEMANS.



Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the North-wind's breath,
And stars to set: but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!

Day is for mortal care,
Eve for glad meetings at the joyous hearth,
Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer,
But all for thee, thou mightiest of the earth!

The banquet has its hour,
The feverish hour of mirth and song and wine:
There comes a day for grief's overwhelming shower,
A time for softer tears: but all are thine.

Youth and the opening rose
May look like things too glorious for decay,
And smile at thee! - but thou art not of those
That wait the ripen'd bloom to seize their prey!



"FRONDES EST UBI DECIDANT."

Charles Stuart Calverley

Let Us Turn Hitherward Our Bark.

R. C. TRENCH.



"Let us turn hitherward our bark," they cried,
"And, 'mid the blisses of this happy isle,
Past toil forgetting and to come, abide
In joyfulness awhile.

And then, refreshed, our tasks resume again,
If other tasks we yet are bound unto,
Combing the hoary tresses of the main
With sharp swift keel anew."

O heroes, that had once a nobler aim,
O heroes, sprung from many a godlike line,
What will ye do, unmindful of your fame,
And of your race divine?

But they, by these prevailing voices now
Lured, evermore draw nearer to the land,
Nor saw the wrecks of many a goodly prow,
That strewed that fatal strand;

Or seeing, feared not - warning taking none
From the plain doom of all who went before,
Whose ...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Lines On Hearing The Organ.

Grinder, who serenely grindest
At my door the Hundredth Psalm,
Till thou ultimately findest
Pence in thy unwashen palm:

Grinder, jocund-hearted Grinder,
Near whom Barbary's nimble son,
Poised with skill upon his hinder
Paws, accepts the proffered bun:

Dearly do I love thy grinding;
Joy to meet thee on thy road
Where thou prowlest through the blinding
Dust with that stupendous load,

'Neath the baleful star of Sirius,
When the postmen slowlier jog,
And the ox becomes delirious,
And the muzzle decks the dog.

Tell me by what art thou bindest
On thy feet those ancient shoon:
Tell me, Grinder, if thou grindest
Always, always out of tune.

Tell me if, as thou art buckling
On thy straps with eager claws,
Thou ...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Lines Suggested By The Fourteenth Of February.

Darkness succeeds to twilight:
Through lattice and through skylight
The stars no doubt, if one looked out,
Might be observed to shine:
And sitting by the embers
I elevate my members
On a stray chair, and then and there
Commence a Valentine.

Yea! by St. Valentinus,
Emma shall not be minus
What all young ladies, whate'er their grade is,
Expect to-day no doubt:
Emma the fair, the stately -
Whom I beheld so lately,
Smiling beneath the snow-white wreath
Which told that she was "out."

Wherefore fly to her, swallow,
And mention that I'd "follow,"
And "pipe and trill," et cetera, till
I died, had I but wings:
Say the North's "true and tender,"
The South an old offender;
And hint in fact, with your well-known tact,
All kin...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Lines Suggested By The Fourteenth Of February.

Ere the morn the East has crimsoned,
When the stars are twinkling there,
(As they did in Watts's Hymns, and
Made him wonder what they were:)
When the forest-nymphs are beading
Fern and flower with silvery dew -
My infallible proceeding
Is to wake, and think of you.

When the hunter's ringing bugle
Sounds farewell to field and copse,
And I sit before my frugal
Meal of gravy-soup and chops:
When (as Gray remarks) "the moping
Owl doth to the moon complain,"
And the hour suggests eloping -
Fly my thoughts to you again.

May my dreams be granted never?
Must I aye endure affliction
Rarely realised, if ever,
In our wildest works of fiction?
Madly Romeo loved his Juliet;
Copperfield began to pine
When he hadn't been to school ye...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Love.

Canst thou love me, lady?
I've not learn'd to woo:
Thou art on the shady
Side of sixty too.
Still I love thee dearly!
Thou hast lands and pelf:
But I love thee merely
Merely for thyself.

Wilt thou love me, fairest?
Though thou art not fair;
And I think thou wearest
Someone-else's hair.
Thou could'st love, though, dearly:
And, as I am told,
Thou art very nearly
Worth thy weight, in gold.

Dost thou love me, sweet one?
Tell me that thou dost!
Women fairly beat one,
But I think thou must.
Thou art loved so dearly:
I am plain, but then
Thou (to speak sincerely)
Art as plain again.

Love me, bashful fairy!
I've an empty purse:
And I've "moods," which vary;
Mostly for the worse.
Still, I lov...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Lovers, And A Reflection.

In moss-prankt dells which the sunbeams flatter
(And heaven it knoweth what that may mean:
Meaning, however, is no great matter)
Where woods are a-tremble, with rifts atween;

Thro' God's own heather we wonn'd together,
I and my Willie (O love my love):
I need hardly remark it was glorious weather,
And flitterbats waver'd alow, above:

Boats were curtseying, rising, bowing,
(Boats in that climate are so polite),
And sands were a ribbon of green endowing,
And O the sundazzle on bark and bight!

Thro' the rare red heather we danced together,
(O love my Willie!) and smelt for flowers:
I must mention again it was gorgeous weather,
Rhymes are so scarce in this world of ours:-

By rises that flush'd with their purple favours,
Thro' becks tha...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Morning.

'Tis the hour when white-horsed Day
Chases Night her mares away;
When the Gates of Dawn (they say)
Phobus opes:
And I gather that the Queen
May be uniformly seen,
Should the weather be serene,
On the slopes.

When the ploughman, as he goes
Leathern-gaitered o'er the snows,
From his hat and from his nose
Knocks the ice;
And the panes are frosted o'er,
And the lawn is crisp and hoar,
As has been observed before
Once or twice.

When arrayed in breastplate red
Sings the robin, for his bread,
On the elmtree that hath shed
Every leaf;
While, within, the frost benumbs
The still sleepy schoolboy's thumbs,
And in consequence his sums
Come to grief.

But when breakfast-time hath come,
And he's crunching crust a...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Motherhood.

She laid it where the sunbeams fall
Unscann'd upon the broken wall.
Without a tear, without a groan,
She laid it near a mighty stone,
Which some rude swain had haply cast
Thither in sport, long ages past,
And Time with mosses had o'erlaid,
And fenced with many a tall grassblade,
And all about bid roses bloom
And violets shed their soft perfume.
There, in its cool and quiet bed,
She set her burden down and fled:
Nor flung, all eager to escape,
One glance upon the perfect shape
That lay, still warm and fresh and fair,
But motionless and soundless there.

No human eye had mark'd her pass
Across the linden-shadow'd grass
Ere yet the minster clock chimed seven:
Only the innocent birds of heaven -
The magpie, and the rook whose nest
Swi...

Charles Stuart Calverley

Mystery.

I know not if in others' eyes
She seem'd almost divine;
But far beyond a doubt it lies
That she did not in mine.

Each common stone on which she trod
I did not deem a pearl:
Nay it is not a little odd
How I abhorr'd that girl.

We met at balls and picnics oft,
Or on a drawingroom stair;
My aunt invariably cough'd
To warn me she was there:

At croquet I was bid remark
How queenly was her pose,
As with stern glee she drew the dark
Blue ball beneath her toes,

And made the Red fly many a foot:
Then calmly she would stoop,
Smiling an angel smile, to put
A partner through his hoop.

At archery I was made observe
That others aim'd more near.
But none so tenderly could curve
The elbow round the ear:

Charles Stuart Calverley

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