Owen Seaman

Elegi Musarum

(AFTER W. W.)

[To Mr. St. Loe Strachey.]

Dawn of the year that emerges, a fine and ebullient Phœnix,
Forth from the cinders of Self, out of the ash of the Past;
Year that discovers my Muse in the thick of purpureal sonnets,
Slating diplomacy’s sloth, blushing for ‘Abdul the d----d’;
Year that in guise of a herald declaring the close of the tourney
Clears the redoubtable lists hot with the Battle of Bays;
Binds on the brows of the Tory, the highly respectable Austin,
Laurels that Phœbus of old wore on the top of his tuft;

Leaving the locks of the hydra, of Bodley the numerous-headed,
Clean as the chin of a boy, bare as a babe in a bath;
Year that––I see in the vista the principal verb of the sentence
Loom as a deeply-desired bride that is late at the post––
Year that has painfully tickled the lachrymal nerves of the Muses,
Giving Another the gift due to Respectfully Theirs;––
Hinc illæ lacrimæ! Ah, reader! I grossly misled you;
See, it was false; there is no principal verb after all!

His likewise is the anguish, who followed with soft serenading
Me as the tremulous tide tracks the meandering moon;
Climbing as Romeo clomb, peradventure by help of a flower-pot,
Where in her balconied bower lay, inexpressibly coy,
Juliet, not as the others, supinely, insanely erotic,
Pallid and yellow of hue, very degenerate souls,
Rioting round with the rapture of palpitant ichorous ardour,
But an immaculate maid, ‘one,’ you may say, ‘of the best’!
His, I repeat, is the anguish––my journalist, eulogist critic,
Strachey, the generous judge, Saintly unlimited Loe!

Vainly the stolid Spectator, bewildered with fabulous bow-wows,
Sick with a surfeit of dog, ran me for all it was worth!
Vainly––if I may recur to a metaphor drawn from the ocean,
Long (in a figure of speech) tied to the tail of the moon––
Vainly, O excellent organ! with ample and aqueous unction
Once, as a rule, in a week, ‘cleansing the Earth of her stain’;
(Here you will possibly pardon the natural scion of poets,
Proud with humility’s pride, spoiling a passage from Keats)––
Vainly your voice on the ears of impregnable Laureate-makers,
Rang as the sinuous sea rings on a petrified coast;
Vainly your voice with a subtle and slightly indelicate largess,
Broke on an obdurate world hymning the advent of Me;
When from the ‘commune of air,’ from ‘the exquisite fabric of Silence,’
I, a superior orb, burst into exquisite print!

What shall we say for your greeting, O good horticultural Alfred!
Royalty’s darling and pride, crown of the Salisbury Press?
Now when the negligent Public, in search of a subject for dinner,
Asks for the names of your books, Lord! what a boom there will be!
Hoarse in Penbryn are the howlings that rise for the hope of the Cymri;
Over her Algernon’s head Putney composes a dirge;
Edwin anathematises politely in various lingos;
Davidson ruminates hard over a Ballad of Hell;
Fondly Le Gallienne fancies how pretty the Delphian laurels
Would have appeared on his own hairy and passionate poll;
I, imperturbably careless, untainted of jealousy’s jaundice,
Simply regret the profane contumely done to the Muse;
Done to the Muse in the person of Me, her patron, that never
Licked Ministerial lips, dusted the boots of the Court!
Surely I hear through the noisy and nauseous clamour of Carlton
Sobs of the sensitive Nine heave upon Helicon’s hump!