LITMIR.BIZ

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a great dislike to it, for his ideas loved to dwell in the regions of fancy,” which are closed to attorneys. So he thought of being a clergyman, and was sent to St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford. There “he did not apply himself to the pursuit of academical honours,” but fell in love with a young lady whose brother he had tended in a fatal illness. But “they were both too wise to think of living upon love, and, after mutual tears and sighs, they parted never to meet again. The lady, though grieved, was not heartbroken, and soon became the wife of another.” They usually do. Mr. Bayly’s regret was more profound, and expressed itself in the touching ditty:

      “Oh, no, we never mention her,

       Her name is never heard,

       My lips are now forbid to speak

       That once familiar word;

       From sport to sport they hurry me

       To banish my regret,

       And when they only worry me—

      [I beg Mr. Bayly’s pardon]

      “And when they win a smile from me,

       They fancy I forget.

      “They bid me seek in change of scene

       The charms that others see,

       But were I in a foreign land

       They’d find no change in me.

       ’Tis true that I behold no more

       The valley where we met;

       I do not see the hawthorn tree,

       But how can I forget?”

      * * * * *

      “They tell me she is happy now,

      [And so she was, in fact.]

      The gayest of the gay;

       They hint that she’s forgotten me;

       But heed not what they say.

       Like me, perhaps, she struggles with

       Each feeling of regret:

       ’Tis true she’s married Mr. Smith,

       But, ah, does she forget!”

      The temptation to parody is really too strong; the last lines, actually and in an authentic text, are:

      “But if she loves as I have loved,

       She never can forget.”

      Bayly had now struck the note, the sweet, sentimental note, of the early, innocent, Victorian age. Jeames imitated him:

      “R. Hangeline, R. Lady mine,

       Dost thou remember Jeames!”

      We should do the trick quite differently now, more like this:

      “Love spake to me and said:

       ‘Oh, lips, be mute;

       Let that one name be dead,

       That memory flown and fled,

       Untouched that lute!

       Go forth,’ said Love, ‘with willow in thy hand,

       And in thy hair

       Dead blossoms wear,

       Blown from the sunless land.

      “ ‘Go forth,’ said Love; ‘thou never more shalt see

       Her shadow glimmer by the trysting tree;

       But she is glad, With roses crowned and clad, Who hath forgotten thee!’ But I made answer: ‘Love! Tell me no more thereof, For she has drunk of that same cup as I. Yea, though her eyes be dry, She garners there for me Tears salter than the sea, Even till the day she die.’ So gave I Love the lie.”

      I declare I nearly weep over these lines; for, though they are only Bayly’s sentiment hastily recast in a modern manner, there is something so very affecting, mouldy, and unwholesome about them, that they sound as if they had been “written up to” a sketch by a disciple of Mr. Rossetti’s.

      In a mood much more manly and moral, Mr. Bayly wrote another poem to the young lady:

      “May thy lot in life be happy, undisturbed by thoughts of me,

       The God who shelters innocence thy guard and guide will be.

       Thy heart will lose the chilling sense of hopeless love at last,

       And the sunshine of the future chase the shadows of the past.”

      It is as easy as prose to sing in this manner. For example:

      “In fact, we need not be concerned; ‘at last’ comes very soon, and our Emilia quite forgets the memory of the moon, the moon that shone on her and us, the woods that heard our vows, the moaning of the waters, and the murmur of the boughs. She is happy with another, and by her we’re quite forgot; she never lets a thought of us bring shadow on her lot; and if we meet at dinner she’s too clever to repine, and mentions us to Mr. Smith as ‘An old flame of mine.’ And shall I grieve that it is thus? and would I have her weep, and lose her healthy appetite and break her healthy sleep? Not so, she’s not poetical, though ne’er shall I forget the fairy of my fancy whom I once thought I had met. The fairy of my fancy! It was fancy, most things are; her emotions were not steadfast as the shining of a star; but, ah, I love her image yet, as once it shone on me, and swayed me as the low moon sways the surging of the sea.”

      Among other sports his anxious friends hurried the lovelorn Bayly to Scotland, where he wrote much verse, and then to Dublin, which completed his cure. “He seemed in the midst of the crowd the gayest of all, his laughter rang merry and loud at banquet and hall.” He thought no more of studying for the Church, but went back to Bath, met a Miss Hayes, was fascinated by Miss Hayes, “came, saw, but did not conquer at once,” says Mrs. Haynes Bayly (née Hayes) with widow’s pride. Her lovely name was Helena; and I deeply regret to add that, after an education at Oxford, Mr. Bayly, in his poems, accentuated the penultimate, which, of course, is short.

      “Oh, think not, Helena, of leaving us yet,”

      he carolled, when it would have been just as easy, and a hundred times more correct, to sing—

      “Oh, Helena, think not of leaving us yet.”

      Miss Hayes had lands in Ireland, alas! and Mr. Bayly insinuated that, like King Easter and King Wester in the ballad, her lovers courted her for her lands and her fee; but he, like King Honour,

      “For her bonny face

       And for her fair bodie.”

      In 1825 (after being elected to the Athenæum) Mr. Bayly “at last found favour in the eyes of Miss Hayes.” He presented her with a little ruby heart, which she accepted, and they were married, and at first were well-to-do, Miss Hayes being the heiress of Benjamin Hayes, Esq., of Marble Hill, in county Cork. A friend of Mr. Bayly’s described him thus:

      “I never have met on this chilling earth

       So merry, so kind, so frank a youth,

       In moments of pleasure a smile all mirth,

       In moments of sorrow a heart of truth.

       I have heard thee praised, I have seen thee led

       By Fashion along her gay career;

       While beautiful lips have often shed

       Their flattering poison in thine ear.”

      Yet he says that the poet was unspoiled. On his honeymoon, at Lord Ashdown’s, Mr. Bayly, flying from some fair sirens, retreated to a bower, and there wrote his world-famous “I’d be a Butterfly.”

      “I’d be a butterfly, living a rover,

       Dying when fair things are fading away.”

      The place in which the deathless strains welled from the singer’s heart was henceforth known as “Butterfly Bower.” He now wrote a novel, “The

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