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TITLE: GRASS OF PARNASSUS
AUTHOR: ANDREW LANG
EBOOK: E02343 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

Grass of Parnassus

Contents:

   Grass of Parnassus
   Deeds of men:
      Seekers for a city
      The white Pacha
      Midnight, January 25, 1886
      Advance, Australia
      Colonel Burnaby
      Melville and Coghill
   Rhodocleia:
      To Rhodocleia--on her melancholy singing
   Ave:
      Clevedon church
      Twilight on Tweed *
      Metempsychosis *
      Lost in Hades *
      A star in the night *
      A sunset on yarrow *
      Another way
   Hesperothen:
      The seekers for Phaeacia
      A song of Phaeacia
      The departure from Phaeacia
      A ballad of departure
      They hear the sirens for the second time
      Circe's Isle revisited
      The limit of lands
   Verses:
      Martial in town
      April on Tweed
      Tired of towns
      Scythe song
      Pen and ink
      A dream
      The singing rose
      A review in rhyme
      Colinette *
      A sunset of Watteau *
      Nightingale weather *
      Love and wisdom *
      Good-bye *
      An old prayer *
      A la belle Helene *
      Sylvie et Aurelie *
      A lost path *
      The shade of Helen *
   Sonnets:
      She
      Herodotus in Egypt
      Gerard de Nerval *
      Ronsard *
      Love's miracle *
      Dreams *
      Two sonnets of the sirens *
   Translations:
      Hymn to the winds *
      Moonlight *
      The grave and the rose *
      A vow to heavenly Venus *
      Of his lady's old age *
      Shadows of his lady *
      April *
      An old tune *
      Old loves *
      A lady of high degree *
      Iannoula *
      The milk-white doe *
      Heliodore
      The prophet
      Lais
      Clearista
      The fisherman's tomb
      Of his death
      Rhodope
      To a girl
      To the ships
      A late convert
      The limit of life
      To Daniel Elzevir
   The Last Chance

To E. M. S.

Prima dicta mihi, summa dicenda Camena.

The years will pass, and hearts will range,
YOU conquer Time, and Care, and Change.
Though Time doth still delight to shed
The dust on many a younger head;
Though Care, oft coming, hath the guile
From younger lips to steal the smile;
Though Change makes younger hearts wax cold,
And sells new loves for loves of old,
Time, Change, nor Care, hath learned the art
To fleck your hair, to chill your heart,
To touch your tresses with the snow,
To mar your mirth of long ago.
Change, Care, nor Time, while life endure,
Shall spoil our ancient friendship sure,
The love which flows from sacred springs,
In 'old unhappy far-off things,'
From sympathies in grief and joy,
Through all the years of man and boy.

Therefore, to you, the rhymes I strung
When even this 'brindled' head was young
I bring, and later rhymes I bring
That flit upon as weak a wing,
But still for you, for yours, they sing!

Many of the verses and translations in this volume were published first in
Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872).  Though very sensible that they
have the demerits of imitative and even of undergraduate rhyme, I print
them again because people I like have liked them.  The rest are of
different dates, and lack (though doubtless they need) the excuse of having
been written, like some of the earlier pieces, during College Lectures.  I
would gladly have added to this volume what other more or less serious
rhymes I have written, but circumstances over which I have no control have
bound them up with Ballades, and other toys of that sort.

It may be as well to repeat in prose, what has already been said in verse,
that Grass of Parnassus, the pretty Autumn flower, grows in the marshes at
the foot of the Muses' Hill, and other hills, not at the top by any means.

Several of the versions from the Greek Anthology have been published in the
Fortnightly Review, and the sonnet on Colonel Burnaby appeared in Punch.
These, with pieces from other serials, are reprinted by the courteous
permission of the Editors.

The verses that were published in Ballades and Lyrics, and in Ballads and
Verses Vain (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York), are marked in the contents
with an asterisk.

GRASS OF PARNASSUS.

Pale star that by the lochs of Galloway,
In wet green places 'twixt the depth and height
Dost keep thine hour while Autumn ebbs away,
When now the moors have doffed the heather bright,
Grass of Parnassus, flower of my delight,
How gladly with the unpermitted bay--
Garlands not mine, and leaves that not decay--
How gladly would I twine thee if I might!

The bays are out of reach!  But far below
The peaks forbidden of the Muses' Hill,
Grass of Parnassus, thy returning snow
Between September and October chill
Doth speak to me of Autumns long ago,
And these kind faces that are with me still.

DEEDS OF MEN

[Greek text]

To Colonel Ian Hamilton.

To you, who know the face of war,
You, that for England wander far,
You that have seen the Ghazis fly
From English lads not sworn to die,
You that have lain where, deadly chill,
The mist crept o'er the Shameful Hill,
You that have conquered, mile by mile,
The currents of unfriendly Nile,
And cheered the march, and eased the strain
When Politics made valour vain,
Ian, to you, from banks of Ken,
We send our lays of Englishmen!

SEEKERS FOR A CITY.

"Believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful place, were set on a hill
visible to all the world, I should long ago have journeyed thither. . . But
the number and variety of the ways!  For you know, THERE IS BUT ONE ROAD
THAT LEADS TO CORINTH."

HERMOTIMUS (Mr Pater's Version).

"The Poet says, DEAR CITY OF CECROPS, and wilt thou not say, DEAR CITY OF
ZEUS?"

M. ANTONINUS.

"TO CORINTH LEADS ONE ROAD," you say:
Is there a Corinth, or a way?
Each bland or blatant preacher hath
His painful or his primrose path,
And not a soul of all of these
But knows the city 'twixt the seas,
Her fair unnumbered homes and all
Her gleaming amethystine wall!

Blind are the guides who know the way,

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