R. C. Lehmann

Rudolph Chambers Lehmann, known as R. C. Lehmann, was an English writer, poet, and Liberal Party politician. He was also a noted rowing coach and journalist. Lehmann was highly regarded in literary circles and known for his humorous verse. His career spanned various fields, including contributions to 'Punch' magazine and significant involvement in the sporting world. He was a Member of Parliament for Harborough from 1906 to 1910.

January 3, 1856

January 22, 1929

English

R. C. Lehmann

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Soo-Ti - A Pekinese

Soo-Ti, I thank the careful fate
That made you wise and obstinate,
Alert, but with a proper pride,
And gay, but wondrous dignified.
I praise your black and tilted nose;
I praise your heart's deep love that shows
In songs made up of whimpering cries
And in the radiance of your eyes
(And if they bulge - forgive the allusion -
Are eyes the worse for such protrusion?
The smaller eyes are, sure, the blinder,
And size makes every kind eye kinder).
Next with affection's look I note
The glossy levels of your coat,
Where a rich black doth most prevail,
Shading to beaver in your tail,
And lightly fading as it reaches
The tufted things you wear as breeches.

The dweller on the cushion purrs
No less when Soo-Ti barks and stirs.
She blinks and blin...

R. C. Lehmann

Teeth-Setting

(1914)

When the thunder-shaking German hosts are marching over France -
Lo, the glinting of the bayonet and the quiver of the lance! -
When a rowdy rampant KAISER, stout and mad and middle-aged,
Strips his breast of British Orders just to prove that he's enraged;
    When with fire and shot and pillage
    He destroys each town and village;
When the world is black with warfare, then there's one thing you must do:
Set your teeth like steel, my hearties, and sit tight and see it through.


Oh, it's heavy work is fighting, but our soldiers do it well -
Lo, the booming of the batteries, the clatter of the shell! -
And it's weary work retiring, but they kept a dauntless front,
All our company of heroes who have borne the dreadful brunt.
    They can meet the foe a...

R. C. Lehmann

The Bath

Hang garlands on the bathroom door;
    Let all the passages be spruce;
For, lo, the victim comes once more,
    And, ah, he struggles like the deuce!

Bring soaps of many scented sorts;
    Let girls in pinafores attend,
With John, their brother, in his shorts,
    To wash their dusky little friend.

Their little friend, the dusky dog,
    Short-legged and very obstinate,
Faced like a much-offended frog,
    And fighting hard against his fate.

No Briton he! From palace-born
    Chinese patricians he descends;
He keeps their high ancestral scorn;
    His spirit breaks, but never bends.

Our water-ways he fain would'scape;
    He hates the customary bath
That thins his tail and spoils his shape,
    And turns him to a fur-cla...

R. C. Lehmann

The Bird In The Room

A robin skimmed into the room,
    And blithe he looked and jolly,
A foe to every sort of gloom,
    And, most, to melancholy.
He cocked his head, he made no sound,
    But gave me stare for stare back,
When, having fluttered round and round,
    He perched upon a chair-back.

I rose; ah, then, it seemed, he knew
    Too late his reckless error:
Away in eager haste he flew,
    And at his tail flew terror.
Now here, now there, from wall to floor,
    For mere escape appealing,
He fled and struck against the door
    Or bumped about the ceiling.

I went and flung each window wide,
    I drew each half-raised blind up;
To coax him out in vain I tried;
    He could not make his mind up.
He flew, he fell, he took a rest,
    And ...

R. C. Lehmann

The Birthday

Sweetheart, where all the dancing joys compete
Take now your choice; the world is at your feet,
All turned into a gay and shining pleasance,
And every face has smiles to greet your presence.
    Treading on air,
    Yourself you look more fair;
And the dear Birthday-elves unseen conspire
To flush your cheeks and set your eyes on fire.

Mayhap they whisper what a birthday means
That sets you spinning through your pretty teens.
A slim-grown shape adorned with golden shimmers
Of tossing hair that streams and waves and glimmers,
    Lo, how you run
    In mere excess of fun,
Or change to silence as you stand and hear
Some kind old tale that moves you to a tear.

And, since this is your own bright day, my dear,
Of all the days that gem the sparkling ...

R. C. Lehmann

The Contract

"Come, Peggy, put your toys away; you needn't shake your head,
Your bear's been working overtime; he's panting for his bed.
He's turned a thousand somersaults, and now his head must ache;
It's cruelty to animals to keep the bear awake."

At this she stamped in mutiny, and then she urged her plea,
Her wonted plea, "A little time, a minute more, for me."
"Be off, you little rogue of rogues," I sternly made reply;
"It's wicked to be sitting up with sand in either eye.

"To bed, to bed, you sleepy head; and then, and then - who knows? -
Some day you'll be a grown-up girl, and lovely as a rose.
And some day some one else will come, a gallant youth and gay,
To harry me and marry you and carry you away."

At this the storm broke out afresh: - "You know I hate the boys;

R. C. Lehmann

The Dance

When good-nights have been prattled, and prayers have been said,
And the last little sunbeam is tucked up in bed,
Then, skirting the trees on a carpet of snow,
The elves and the fairies come out in a row.
    With a preening of wings
    They are forming in rings;
Pirouetting and setting they cross and advance
In a ripple of laughter, and pair for a dance.

And it's oh for the boom of the fairy bassoon,
And the oboes and horns as they strike up a tune,
And the twang of the harps and the sigh of the lutes,
And the clash of the cymbals, the purl of the flutes;
    And the fiddles sail in
    To the musical din,
While the chief all on fire, with a flame for a hand,
Rattles on the gay measure and stirs up his band.

With a pointing of toes and a lifting ...

R. C. Lehmann

The Death Of Euclid

"Euclid, we are told, is at last dead, after two thousand years of an immortality that he never much deserved." - The Times Literary Supplement.

    A THRENODY for EUCLID! This is he
    Who with his learning made our youth a waste,
    Holding our souls in fee;
    A god whose high-set crystal throne was based
    Beyond the reach of tears,
    Deeper than time and his relentless years!

    Come then, ye Angle-Nymphs, and make lament;
    Ye little Postulates, and all the throng
    Of Definitions, with your heads besprent
    In funeral ashes, ye who long
    Worshipped the King and followed in his train;
    For he is dead and cannot rise again.

    Then from the shapes that beat their breasts and wept,
    Soft to the light a gentle Problem ...

R. C. Lehmann

The Dogs' Welcome

Hush! We're not a pack of boys
Always bound to make a noise.
    True, there's one amongst us, but
    He is young;
And, wherever we may take him,
    We can generally shut
Such a youngster up and make him
    Hold his tongue.

Hush! Most cautiously we go
On the tippest tip of toe.
    Are the dogs expecting us
    At the gate?
Two, who usually prize us,
    Will they jump and make a fuss?
Will they really recognise us
    Where they wait?

    Hush! I hear the funny pair
    Softly whimpering - yes, they're there.
Dane and Pekinese, they scratch
    At the wood,
    At the solid wood between us;
Duke attempts to lift the latch;
    It's a month since they have seen us -
    Open! Good!

Down, Duke, down! ...

R. C. Lehmann

The Dragon Of Winter Hill

    I

This is the tale the old men tell, the tale that was told to me,
    Of the blue-green dragon,
    The dreadful dragon,
    The dragon who flew so free,
    The last of his horrible scaly race
    Who settled and made his nesting place
    Some hundreds of thousands of years ago.
    One day, as the light was falling low
    And the turbulent wind was still,
    In a stony hollow,
    Where none dared follow,
Beyond the ridge on the gorse-clad summit, the summit of Winter Hill!

The news went round in the camp that night; it was Dickon who brought it first
    How the wonderful dragon,
    The fiery dragon,
    On his terrified eyes had burst.

"I was out," he said, "for a fat young buck,
But never a touch I had of luck;
An...

R. C. Lehmann

The Last Cock-Pheasant

Splendour, whom lately on your glowing flight
    Athwart the chill and cheerless winter-skies
I marked and welcomed with a futile right,
    And then a futile left, and strained my eyes
To see you so magnificently large,
Sinking to rest beyond the fir-wood's marge -

Not mine, not mine the fault: despise me not
    In that I missed you; for the sun was down,
And the dim light was all against the shot;
    And I had booked a bet of half-a-crown.
My deadly fire is apt to be upset
By many causes - always by a bet.

Or had I overdone it with the sloes,
    Snared by their home-picked brand of ardent gin
Designed to warm a shivering sportsman's toes
    And light a fire his reckless head within?
Or did my silly loader put me off
With aimless chatter...

R. C. Lehmann

The Last Straw

    I sing the sofa! It had stood for years,
    An invitation to benign repose,
    A foe to all the fretful brood of fears,
    Bidding the weary eye-lid sink and close.
    Massive and deep and broad it was and bland -
    In short the noblest sofa in the land.

    You, too, my friend, my solid friend, I sing,
    Whom on an afternoon I did behold
    Eying - 'twas after lunch - the cushioned thing,
    And murmuring gently, "Here are realms of gold,
    And I shall visit them," you said, "and be
    The sofa's burden till it's time for tea."

    "Let those who will go forth," you said, "and dare,
    Beyond the cluster of the little shops,
    To strain their limbs and take the eager air,
    Seeking the heights of Hedsor and its copse.
    I s...

R. C. Lehmann

The Lean-To-Shed

(COMMUNICATED BY AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD)

I've a palace set in a garden fair,
And, oh, but the flowers are rich and rare,
    Always growing
    And always blowing
Winter or summer - it doesn't matter -
For there's never a wind that dares to scatter
The wonderful petals that scent the air
About the walls of my palace there.
And the palace itself is very old,
And it's built of ivory splashed with gold.
It has silver ceilings and jasper floors
And stairs of marble and crystal doors;
And whenever I go there, early or late,
The two tame dragons who guard the gate
And refuse to open the frowning portals
To sisters, brothers and other mortals,
    Get up with a grin
    And let me in.
And I tickle their ears and pull their tails
And pat their hea...

R. C. Lehmann

The Old Grey Mare

    There's a line of rails on an upland green
    With a good take-off and a landing sound,
    Six fences grim as were ever seen,
    And it's there I would be with fox and hound.
    Oh, that was a country free and fair
    For the raking stride of my old grey mare!

    With her raking stride, and her head borne high,
    And her ears a-prick, and her heart a-flame,
    And the steady look of her deep brown eye,
    I warrant the grey mare knew the game:
    It was "Up to it, lass," and before I knew
    We were up and over, and on we flew.

    The rooks from the grass got up, and so,
    With a caw and flap, away they went;
    When the grey mare made up her mind to go
    At the tail of the bounds on a breast-high scent,
    The best of the st...

R. C. Lehmann

The Sparrow

Let others from the feathered brood
Which through the garden seeks its food
Pick out for a commending word
Each one his own peculiar bird;
Hail the plump tit, or fitly sing
The finch's crest and flashing wing;
Exalt the rook's black satin dress-coat,
The thrush's speckled fancy waistcoat;
Or praise the robin, meek, but sly,
For breast and tail and friendly eye -
These have their place within my heart;
The sparrow owns the larger part,
And, for no virtues, rules in it,
My reckless cheerful favourite!
Friend sparrow, let the world contemn
Your ways and make a mock of them,
And dub you, if it has a mind,
Low, quarrelsome, and unrefined;
And let it, if it will, pursue
With harsh abuse the troops of you
Who through the orchard and the field

R. C. Lehmann

The Vagabond

It was deadly cold in Danbury town
    One terrible night in mid November,
    A night that the Danbury folk remember
For the sleety wind that hammered them down,
That chilled their faces and chapped their skin,
    And froze their fingers and bit their feet,
And made them ice to the heart within,
    And spattered and scattered
    And shattered and battered
Their shivering bodies about the street;
And the fact is most of them didn't roam
In the face of the storm, but stayed at home;
While here and there a policeman, stamping
To keep himself warm or sedately tramping
Hither and thither, paced his beat;
Or peered where out of the blizzard's welter
Some wretched being had crept to shelter,
And now, drenched through by the sleet, a muddled
Blur of a ma...

R. C. Lehmann

To Flight-Lieutenant Robinson, V.C.

You with the hawk's eyes and the nerves of steel,
    How was it with you when the hurried word
Roused you and sent you swiftly forth to deal
    A blow for justice? Sure your pulses stirred,
And all your being leapt to meet the call
    Which bade you strike nor spare
    Where poised in air
Murder and ravening flame were hid intent to fall.

Alone upon your fearful task you flew,
    Where in the vault of heaven the high stars swing,
Alone and upward, lost to mortal view,
    Winding about the assassin craft a ring
Of fateful motion, till at last you sped
    Through the far tracts of gloom
    The bolt of doom,
Shattering the dastard foe to earth with all his dead.

For this we thank you, and we bid you know
    That henceforth in the air, by...

R. C. Lehmann

To Postumous In October

When you and I were younger the world was passing fair;
Our days were sped with laughter, our steps were free as air;
Life lightly lured us onward, and ceased not to unroll
In endless shining vistas a playground for the soul.
But now no glory fires us; we linger in the cold,
And both of us are weary, and both are growing old;
Come, Postumus, and face it, and, facing it, confess
Your years are half a hundred, and mine are nothing less.

When you and I were twenty, my Postumus, we kept
In tidy rooms in College, and there we snugly slept.
And still, when I am dreaming, the bells I can recall
That ordered us to chapel or welcomed us to hall.
The towers repeat our voices, the grey and ancient Courts
Are filled with mirth and movement, and echo to our sports;
Then riverw...

R. C. Lehmann

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