Waring

What's become of Waring

Since he gave us all the slip,

Chose land-travel or seafaring,

Boots and chest or staff and scrip,

Rather than pace up and down

Any longer London town?

Who'd have guessed it from his lip

Or his brow's accustomed bearing,

On the night he thus took ship

Or started landward?--little caring

For us, it seems, who supped together

(Friends of his too, I remember)

And walked home thro' the merry weather,

The snowiest in all December.

I left his arm that night myself

For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet

Who wrote the book there, on the shelf--

How, forsooth, was I to know it

If Waring meant to glide away

Like a ghost at break of day?

Never looked he half so gay!

He was prouder than the devil:

How he must have cursed our revel!

Ay and many other meetings,

Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,

As up and down he paced this London,

With no work done, but great works undone,

Where scarce twenty knew his name.

Why not, then, have earlier spoken,

Written, bustled? Who's to blame

If your silence kept unbroken?

"True, but there were sundry jottings,

Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings,

Certain first steps were achieved

Already which (is that your meaning?)

Had well borne out whoe'er believed

In more to come!" But who goes gleaning

Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved

Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening

Pride alone, puts forth such claims

O'er the day's distinguished names.

Meantime, how much I loved him,

I find out now I've lost him.

I who cared not if I moved him,

Who could so carelessly accost him,

Henceforth never shall get free

Of his ghostly company,

His eyes that just a little wink

As deep I go into the merit

Of this and that distinguished spirit--

His cheeks' raised colour, soon to sink,

As long I dwell on some stupendous

And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)

Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous

Demoniaco-seraphic

Penman's latest piece of graphic.

Nay, my very wrist grows warm

With his dragging weight of arm.

E'en so, swimmingly appears,

Through one's after-supper musings,

Some lost lady of old years

With her beauteous vain endeavour

And goodness unrepaid as ever;

The face, accustomed to refusings,

We, puppies that we were... Oh never

Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled

Being aught like false, forsooth, to?

Telling aught but honest truth to?

What a sin, had we centupled

Its possessor's grace and sweetness!

No! she heard in its completeness

Truth, for truth's a weighty matter,

And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!

Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt

From damning us thro' such a sally;

And so she glides, as down a valley,

Taking up with her contempt,

Past our reach; and in, the flowers

Shut her unregarded hours.

Oh, could I have him back once more,

This Waring, but one half-day more!

Back, with the quiet face of yore,

So hungry for acknowledgment

Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.

Feed, should not he, to heart's content?

I'd say, "to only have conceived,

Planned your great works, apart from progress,

Surpasses little works achieved!"

I'd lie so, I should be believed.

I'd make such havoc of the claims

Of the day's distinguished names

To feast him with, as feasts an ogress

Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!

Or as one feasts a creature rarely

Captured here, unreconciled

To capture; and completely gives

Its pettish humours license, barely

Requiring that it lives.

Ichabod, Ichabod,

The glory is departed!

Travels Waring East away?

Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,

Reports a man upstarted

Somewhere as a god,

Hordes grown European-hearted,

Millions of the wild made tame

On a sudden at his fame?

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,

With the demurest of footfalls

Over the Kremlin's pavement bright

With serpentine and syenite,

Steps, with five other Generals

That simultaneously take snuff,

For each to have pretext enough

And kerchiefwise unfold his sash

Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff

To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,

And leave the grand white neck no gash?

Waring in Moscow, to those rough

Cold northern natures born perhaps,

Like the lamb-white maiden dear

From the circle of mute kings

Unable to repress the tear,

Each as his sceptre down he flings,

To Dian's fane at Taurica,

Where now a captive priestess, she alway

Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech

With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach

As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands

Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands

Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry

Amid their barbarous twitter!

In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!

Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain

That we and Waring meet again

Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane

Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid

All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid

Its stiff gold blazing pall

From some black coffin-lid.

Or, best of all,

I love to think

The leaving us was just a feint;

Back here to London did he slink,

And now works on without a wink

Of sleep, and we are on the brink

Of something great in fresco-paint:

Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,

Up and down and o'er and o'er

He splashes, as none splashed before

Since great Caldara Polidore.

Or Music means this land of ours

Some favour yet, to pity won

By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers--

"Give me my so-long promised son,

Let Waring end what I begun!"

Then down he creeps and out he steals

Only when the night conceals

His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time,

Or hops are picking: or at prime

Of March he wanders as, too happy,

Years ago when he was young,

Some mild eve when woods grew sappy

And the early moths had sprung

To life from many a trembling sheath

Woven the warm boughs beneath;

While small birds said to themselves

What should soon be actual song,

And young gnats, by tens and twelves,

Made as if they were the throng

That crowd around and carry aloft

The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,

Out of a myriad noises soft,

Into a tone that can endure

Amid the noise of a July noon

When all God's creatures crave their boon,

All at once and all in tune,

And get it, happy as Waring then,

Having first within his ken

What a man might do with men:

And far too glad, in the even-glow,

To mix with the world he meant to take

Into his hand, he told you, so--

And out of it his world to make,

To contract and to expand

As he shut or oped his hand.

Oh Waring, what's to really be?

A clear stage and a crowd to see!

Some Garrick, say, out shall not he

The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?

Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,

Some Junius--am I right?--shall tuck

His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!

Some Chatterton shall have the luck

Of calling Rowley into life!

Some one shall somehow run a muck

With this old world for want of strife

Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive

To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?

Our men scarce seem in earnest now.

Distinguished names!--but 'tis, somehow,

As if they played at being names

Still more distinguished, like the games

Of children. Turn our sport to earnest

With a visage of the sternest!

Bring the real times back, confessed

Still better than our very best!

"When I last saw Waring..."

(How all turned to him who spoke!

You saw Waring? Truth or joke?

In land-travel or sea-faring?)

"We were sailing by Triest

Where a day or two we harboured:

A sunset was in the West,

When, looking over the vessel's side,

One of our company espied

A sudden speck to larboard.

And as a sea-duck flies and swims

At once, so came the light craft up,

With its sole lateen sail that trims

And turns (the water round its rims

Dancing, as round a sinking cup)

And by us like a fish it curled,

And drew itself up close beside,

Its great sail on the instant furled,

And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,

(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)

'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?

Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?

A pilot for you to Triest?

Without one, look you ne'er so big,

They'll never let you up the bay!

We natives should know best.'

I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'

Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves

Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'

"In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;

And one, half-hidden by his side

Under the furled sail, soon I spied,

With great grass hat and kerchief black,

Who looked up with his kingly throat,

Said somewhat, while the other shook

His hair back from his eyes to look

Their longest at us; then the boat,

I know not how, turned sharply round,

Laying her whole side on the sea

As a leaping fish does; from the lee

Into the weather, cut somehow

Her sparkling path beneath our bow

And so went off, as with a bound,

Into the rosy and golden half

O' the sky, to overtake the sun

And reach the shore, like the sea-calf

Its singing cave; yet I caught one

Glance ere away the boat quite passed,

And neither time nor toil could mar

Those features: so I saw the last

Of Waring!"--You? Oh, never star

Was lost here but it rose afar!

Look East, where whole new thousands are!

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?