Dramatic Romances

Waring

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[Mr. Alfred Domett, C.M.G., author of

"Ranolf and Amohia," full of descriptions of

New Zealand scenery.]

I

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?

II

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 10

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? 20

Never looked he half so gay!

III

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 30

If your silence kept unbroken?

"True, but there were sundry jottings,

Stray-leaves, fragments, blurrs 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 40

O'er the day's distinguished names.

IV

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-- 50

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, 60

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! 70

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.

V

Oh, could I have him back once more, 80

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 90

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.

VI

Ichabod, Ichabod,

The glory is departed! 100

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 110

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 120

Cold northern natures born perhaps,

Like the lambwhite 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 130

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 140

>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 150

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, 160

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, 170

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 180

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 190

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? 200

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!

II

I

"When I last saw Waring . . ."

(How all turned to him who spoke! 210

You saw Waring? Truth or joke?

In land-travel or sea-faring?)

II

"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, 220

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? 230

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.'

III

"In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;

And one, half-hidden by his side

Under the furled sail, soon I spied, 240

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 250

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! 260

Look East, where whole new thousands are!

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

NOTES:

"Waring." In recounting the sudden disappearance from

among his friends of a man proud and sensitive, who with

fine powers of intellect yet incurred somewhat of disdain

because of his failure to accomplish anything permanent,

expression is given to the deep regret experienced by his

friends now that he has left them, his absence having

brought them to a truer realization of his worth. If only

Waring would come back, the speaker, at least, would

give him the sympathy and encouragement he craved

instead of playing with his sensibilities as he had done.

Conjectures are indulged in as to Waring's whereabouts.

The speaker prefers to think of him as back in London

preparing to astonish the world with some great masterpiece

in art, music, or literature. Another speaker surprises all

by telling how he had seen the `'last of Waring ' in a

momentary meeting at Trieste, but the first speaker is

certain that the star of Waring is destined to rise again

above their horizon.

1. Waring: Alfred Domett (born at Camberwell

Grove, Surrey, May 20, 1811), a friend of Browning's,

distinguished as a poet and as a Colonial statesman and

ruler. His first volume of poems was published in 1832.

Some verses of his in Blackwood's, 1837, attracted much

attention to him as a rising young poet. In 1841 he

was called to the bar, and in 1841 went out to New

Zealand among the earliest settlers. There he lived for

thirty years, filling several important official positions.

His unceremonious departure for New Zealand with no

leave-takings was the occasion of Browning's poem, which

is said by Mrs. Orr to give a lifelike sketch of Domett's

character. His " star'' did, however, rise again for his

English friends, for he returned to London in 1871. The

year following saw the publication of his "Ranolf and

Amohia," a New Zealand poem, in the course of which

he characterizes Browning as "Subtlest Asserter of the

Soul in Song." He met Browning again in London, and

was one of the vice-presidents of the London Browning

Society. Died Nov.12, 1877.

15. I left his arm that night myself: George W. Cooke

points out that in his Living Authors of England

Thomas Powell describes this incident, the "young author"

mentioned being himself: "We have a vivid

recollection of the last time we saw him. It was at

an evening party, a few days before he sailed from

England; his intimate friend, Mr. Browning, was also

present. It happened that the latter was introduced that

evening for the first time to a young author who had just

then appeared in the literary world. This, consequently,

prevented the two friends from conversation, and they

parted from each other without the slightest idea on Mr.

Browning's part that he was seeing his old friend Domett

for the last time. Some days after, when he found that

Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms to the

writer of this sketch the self-reproach he felt at having

preferred the conversation of a stranger to that of his

old associate."

54. Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous: a slight transposition

of part of a line in Virgil describing Polyphemus,

"Monstrum horrendum informe ingens," a monster horrid,

misshapen, huge.

55. Demoniaco-seraphic: these two lines form a compound

of adjectives humorously used by Browning to express

the inferiority of the writers he praised to Waring.

99. Ichabod: "Ichabod, the glory is departed." I Samuel

IV. 21.

112. syenite: Egyptian granite

122. Lamb-white maiden: Iphigenia, who was borne

away to Taurus by Diana, when her father, Agamemnon,

was about to sacrifice her to obtain favorable winds for

his expedition to Troy.

152. Caldara Polidore: Surnamed da Caravaggio. He was

born in Milan in 1492, went to Rome and was employed by

Raphael to paint the friezes in the Vatican. He was murdered

by a servant in Messina, 1543.

155. Purcell: an eminent English musician, composer

of church music, operas, songs, and instrumental music.

(1658-1695).--Rosy Bowers: One of Purcell's most

celebrated songs. "'From Rosie Bowers' is said to

have been set in his last sickness, at which time he seems

to have realized the poetical fable of the Swan and to have

sung more sweetly as he approached nearer his dissolution,

for it seems to us as if no one of his productions was

so elevated, so pleasing, so expressive, and throughout so

perfect as this" (Rees's Cyclopaedia, 1819).

19O. Garrick: David, an English actor, celebrated

especially for his Shakespearian parts (1716-1779).

193. Junius: the assumed name of a political writer

who in 1769 began to issue in London a series of famous

letters which opposed the ministry in power, and denounced

several eminent persons with severe invective and pungent

sarcasm.

195. Some Chatterton shall have the luck of calling

Rowley into life: the chief claim to celebrity of Thomas

Chatterton (1752-1770) is the real or pretended discovery

of poems said to have been written in the fifteenth century

by Thomas Rowley, a priest of Bristol, and found

in Radcliffe church, of which Chatterton's ancestors had

been sextons for many years. They are now generally

considered Chatterton's own.

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