Rhymes a la Mode

(Clement Marot’s Frère Lubin, though translated by Longfellow and others, has not hitherto been rendered into the original measure, of ballade à double refrain.)

Some ten or twenty times a day,
To bustle to the town with speed,
To dabble in what dirt he may, —
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
But any sober life to lead
Upon an exemplary plan,
Requires a Christian indeed, —
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!

Another’s wealth on his to lay,
With all the craft of guile and greed,
To leave you bare of pence or pay, —
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
But watch him with the closest heed,
And dun him with what force you can, —
He’ll not refund, howe’er you plead, —
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!

An honest girl to lead astray,
With subtle saw and promised meed,
Requires no cunning crone and grey, —
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
He preaches an ascetic creed,
But, – try him with the water can —
A dog will drink, whate’er his breed, —
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!

Envoy

In good to fail, in ill succeed,
Le Frère Lubin’s the man you need!
In honest works to lead the van,
Le Frère Lubin is not the man!

BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT. [1 - N.B. There is only one veracious statement in this ballade, which must not be accepted as autobiographical.]

I have scribbled in verse and in prose,
I have painted “arrangements in greens,”
And my name is familiar to those
Who take in the high class magazines;
I compose; I’ve invented machines;
I have written an “Essay on Rhyme”;
For my county I played, in my teens,
But – I am not in “Men of the Time!”

I have lived, as a chief, with the Crows;
I have “interviewed” Princes and Queens;
I have climbed the Caucasian snows;
I abstain, like the ancients, from beans, —
I’ve a guess what Pythagoras means,
When he says that to eat them’s a crime, —
I have lectured upon the Essenes,
But – I am not in “Men of the Time!”

I’ve a fancy as morbid as Poe’s,
I can tell what is meant by “Shebeens,”
I have breasted the river that flows
Through the land of the wild Gadarenes;
I can gossip with Burton on skenes,
I can imitate Irving (the Mime),
And my sketches are quainter than Keene’s,
But – I am not in “Men of the Time!”

Envoy

So the tower of mine eminence leans
Like the Pisan, and mud is its lime;
I’m acquainted with Dukes and with Deans,
But – I am not in “Men of the Time!”

BALLADE OF RAILWAY NOVELS

Let others praise analysis
And revel in a “cultured” style,
And follow the subjective Miss [2 - These lines do not apply to Miss Annie P. (or Daisy) Miller, and her delightful sisters, Gades adituræ mecum, in the pocket edition of Mr. James’s novels, if ever I go to Gades.]
From Boston to the banks of Nile,
Rejoice in anti-British bile,
And weep for fickle hero’s woe,
These twain have shortened many a mile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau.

These damsels of “Democracy’s,”
How long they stop at every stile!
They smile, and we are told, I wis,
Ten subtle reasons why they smile.
Give me your villains deeply vile,
Give me Lecoq, Jottrat, and Co.,
Great artists of the ruse and wile,
Miss Braddon and Gaboriau!

Oh, novel readers, tell me this,
Can prose that’s polished by the file,
Like great Boisgobey’s mysteries,
Wet days and weary ways beguile,
And man to living reconcile,
Like these whose every trick we know?
The agony how high they pile,