Marsyas In Hades

(AFTER SIR L. M.)                             Next I saw     A pensive gentleman of middle age,     That leaned against a Druid oak, his pipe     Pendent beneath his chin, a double one,     (Meaning the pipe); reluctant was his breath,     For he had mingled in the Morris dance     And rested blown; but damsels in their teens,     All decorous and decorously clad,     Their very ankles hardly visible,     Recalled his motions; while, for chaperon,     Good Mrs. Grundy up against the wall     Beamed approbation.                     On his face I read     Signs of high sadness such as poets wear,     Being divinely discontented with     The praise of jeunes filles. Even as I looked,     He touched the portion of his pipe reserved     For minor poetry of solemn tone,     Checking the humorous stops intended for     Electioneering posters and the like;     And therewithal he made the following     Addition to his Songs Unsung, or else     His Unremarked Remarks:                     "Dear Sir," he said,     "Excuse my saying 'Sir' like that; it is     Our way in Hades here among the damned;     For you must know that some of us are damned     Not only by faint praise but full applause     Of simple critics. Take my case. In me     Behold the good knight Marsyas, M.A.,     Three times a candidate for Parliament,     And twice retired; a Justice of the Peace;     Master of Arts (I said), and better known     In literary spheres as Master of     The Mediocre-Obvious; and read     By boarding-misses in their myriads.     These dote upon me. Sweetly have I sung     The commonplaces of philosophy     In common parlance.                  You have read perhaps     The Cymric Triads? Poetry, they say,     Excels alone by sheer simplicity     Of language, subject, and invention. Sir!     The excellence of mine lay that way too.     But fate is partial. Heaven's fulgour moulds     'To happiness some, some to unhappiness!'     (Look you, the harp was Welsh that figured forth     That excellent last line.) I ask you, Sir,     What would you? Ill content with mortal praise,     And haply somewhat overbold, I sought     To be as gods be; sought, in fact, to filch     Apollo's bays!                 Ah me! Dear me! I fain     Would use a stronger phrase, but hardly dare,     Being, whatever else, respectable.     I say I tired of vulgar homage, gift     Of ignorance. 'High failure overleaps     The bounds of low successes' (there, again,     The harp that twanged was Welsh, but with an echo     Of Browning). Godlike it must be, I thought,     To climb the giddy brink; to pen, for instance,     An Ode to the Imperial Institute,     And fall, if bound to, from a decent height.             I did and missed the laurel; still I go     On writing; what you hear just now is blank,     Distinctly blank, and might be measured by     The kilomtre; yet I rhyme as well     A little; but it takes a lot of time,     And checks the lapse of my pellucid stream     Not all conveniently."                          Thereat he paused,     And wrung the moisture from his pipe; but I,     As one that was intolerably bored,     Took even this occasion to be gone;     And, going, marked him how he took his stile,     Polished the waxen tablets, and began     To make a Royal Pan by request,     Or so he said.