Ban and Arriere Ban [0]
Ban and Arriere Ban--A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes
by Andrew Lang
Contents
Dedication
A Scot to Jeanne d'Arc
How they held the Bass for King James
Three portraits of Prince Charles
From Omar Khayyam
Aesop
Les Roses de Sadi
The Haunted Tower
Boat-song
Lost Love
The Promise of Helen
The Restoration of Romance
Central American Antiquities in South Kensington Museum
On Calais Sands
Ballade of Yule
Poscimur
On his Dead Sea-Mew
From Meleager
On the Garland Sent to Rhodocleia
A Galloway Garland
Celia's Eyes
Britannia
Gallia
The Fairy Minister
To Robert Louis Stevenson
For Mark Twain's Jubilee
Poems Written under the Influence of Wordsworth
Mist
Lines
Lines
Ode to Golf
Freshman's Term
A toast
Death in June
To Correspondents
Ballade of Difficult Rhymes
Ballant o'Ballantrae
Song by the Sub-Conscious Self
The Haunted Homes of England
The Disappointment
To the Gentle Reader
The Sonnet
The Tournay of the Heroes
Ballad of the Philanthropist
Neiges d'Antan
In Ercildoune
For a Rose's Sake
The Brigand's Grave
The New-Liveried Year
More Strong than Death
Silentia Lunae
His Lady's Tomb
The Poet's Apology
Notes
DEDICATION: TO ELEANOR CHARLOTTE SELLAR
'Ban and Arriere Ban!' a host
Broken, beaten, all unled,
They return as doth a ghost
From the dead.
Sad or glad my rallied rhymes,
Sought our dusty papers through,
For the sake of other times
Come to you.
Times and places new we know,
Faces fresh and seasons strange
But the friends of long ago
Do not change.
ERRATUM: Reader, a blot hath escaped the watchfulness of the
setter forth: if thou wilt thou mayst amend it. The sonnet on the
forty-fourth page, against all right Italianate laws, hath but
thirteen lines withal: add another to thy liking, if thou art a
Maker; or, if thou art none, even be content with what is set
before thee. If it be scant measure, be sure it is choicely good.
A SCOT TO JEANNE D'ARC
Dark Lily without blame,
Not upon us the shame,
Whose sires were to the Auld Alliance true,
They, by the Maiden's side,
Victorious fought and died,
One stood by thee that fiery torment through,
Till the White Dove from thy pure lips had passed,
And thou wert with thine own St. Catherine at the last.
Once only didst thou see
In artist's imagery,
Thine own face painted, and that precious thing
Was in an Archer's hand
From the leal Northern land.
Alas, what price would not thy people bring
To win that portrait of the ruinous
Gulf of devouring years that hide the Maid from us!
Born of a lowly line,
Noteless as once was thine,
One of that name I would were kin to me,
Who, in the Scottish Guard
Won this for his reward,
To fight for France, and memory of thee:
Not upon us, dark Lily without blame,
Not on the North may fall the shadow of that shame.
On France and England both
The shame of broken troth,
Of coward hate and treason black must be;
If England slew thee, France
Sent not one word, one lance,
One coin to rescue or to ransom thee.
And still thy Church unto the Maid denies
The halo and the palms, the Beatific prize.
But yet thy people calls
Within the rescued walls
Of Orleans; and makes its prayer to thee;
What though the Church have chidden
These orisons forbidden,
Yet art thou with this earth's immortal Three,
With him in Athens that of hemlock died,
And with thy Master dear whom the world crucified.
HOW THEY HELD THE BASS FOR KING JAMES--1691-1693
[Time of Narrating--1743]
Ye hae heard Whigs crack o' the Saints in the Bass, my faith, a
gruesome tale;
How the Remnant paid at a tippeny rate, for a quart o' ha'penny
ale!
But I'll tell ye anither tale o' the Bass, that'll hearten ye up to
hear,
Sae I pledge ye to Middleton first in a glass, and a health to the
Young Chevalier!
The Bass stands frae North Berwick Law a league or less to sea,
About its feet the breakers beat, abune the sea-maws flee,
There's castle