"Glorious news"!-for the liquor trade; Nobody dreamed of "Beau Brocade."

People were thinking of Spanish Crowns; Money was coming from seaport towns!

Nobody dreamed of "Beau Brocade," (Only DOLLY the Chambermaid!)

Blessings on Vernon! Fill up the cans;
Money was coming in "Flys" and "Vans."

Possibly John the Host had heard;
Also, certainly, GEORGE the Guard.

And DOLLY had possibly tidings, too, That made her rise from her bed anew,

Plump as ever, but stern of eye,
With a fixed intention to warn the "Fly."

Lingering only at John his door,
Just to make sure of a jerky snore;

Saddling the grey mare, Dumpling Star,
Fetching the pistol out of the bar;

(The old horse-pistol that, they say,
Came from the battle of Malplaquet;)
Loading with powder that maids would use,
Even in "Forty," to clear the flues;

And a couple of silver buttons, the Squire
Gave her, away in Devonshire.

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These she wadded-for want of better-
With the B-sh-p of L-nd-n's "Pastoral Letter;"

Looked to the flint, and hung the whole,
Ready to use, at her pocket-hole.

Thus equipped and accoutred, DOLLY
Clattered away to "Exciseman's Folly;"

Such was the name of a ruined abode, Just on the edge of the London road.

Thence she thought she might safely try, As soon as she saw it, to warn the "Fly."

But, as chance fell out, her rein she drew, As the BEAU came cantering into view.

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And something of DOLLY one still may trace
In the fresh contours of his "Milkmaid's" face.
George the Guard fled over the sea:
John had a fit-of perplexity;

Turned King's evidence, sad to state;- 175
But John was never immaculate.

As for the BEAU, he was duly tried,
When his wound was healed, at Whitsuntide;

Served-for a day-as the last of "sights,"
To the world of St. James's Street and "White's."

Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850-1894)

A SONG OF THE ROAD

(From Underwoods, 1887)

The gauger walked with willing foot,
And aye the gauger played the flute;
And what would Master Gauger play
But Over the hills and far away?

Whene'er I buckle on my pack
And foot it gaily in the track
O pleasant gauger, long since dead,
I hear you fluting on ahead.

You go with me the self-same way-
The self-same air for me you play;
For I do think and so do you
It is the tune to travel to.

For who would gravely set his face
To go to this or t'other place?
There's nothing under heav'n so blue
That's fairly worth the travelling to.

On every hand the roads begin,
And people walk with zeal therein;
But wheresoe'er the highways tend,
Be sure there's nothing at the end."

Then follow you wherever hie
The travelling mountains of the sky.
Or let the streams of civil mode
Direct your choice upon the road;

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For one and all, or high or low,
Will lead you where you wish to go;
And one and all go night and day
Over the hills and far away!

THE CELESTIAL SURGEON
(From the same)

If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:-
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!

THE COUNTERBLAST-1886
(From the same)

My bonny man, the warld, it's true,
Was made for neither me nor you;
It's just a place to warstle1 through,
As Job confessed o't;

And aye the best that we'll can do
Is mak the best o't.

There's rowth2 o' wrang, I'm free to say:
The simmer brunt, the winter blae,'
The face of earth a' fyled wi' clay
An' dour wi' chuckies,"

An' life a rough an' land'art play
For country buckies.

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5

10

10

Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?

Merry of soul he sailed on a day
Over the sea to Skye.

Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun,

All that was good, all that was fair, All that was me is one.

REQUIEM

(From the same)

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live, and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

Thomas Carlyle

1795-1881

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHES1

(From Sartor Resartus, 1831)

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5

"Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the universe, God is there." Thou thyself, O cultivated reader,

12 Two small islands in the Hebrides.

1 The "Philosophy of Clothes," by which Carlyle meant the true significance of the relations in which outward, visible, and material things stand to the inner or underlying world of reality or spirit, is the theme of the book Sartor Resartus (the tailor patched or restored). Carlyle regarded the whole world of the senses-Nature, man's history, institutions, and customs-as the vesture, or clothes, of the spirit beneath. This philosophy he puts in the mouth of an imaginary German professor. Herr Teufelsdröckh, whose "Life and Opinions" are supposed to be set forth by his friend the editor, "a young and enthusiastic Englishman." Teufelsdröckh is described as professor of Allerlei Wissenschaft (all sorts of knowledge) at Weissnichtwo (Don't know where), a name which is the equivalent of Sir Thomas More's Utopia. 2 Psalms, cxxxix. 9-10.