Around, their sports forgetting, gather’d the courtier crowd:
The haughty warriors, humbled, before their Maker bow’d;
The queen herself was melted by tales of joys and woes,
And threw down to the singers, pluck’d from her breast, a rose.
“My folk you have enchanted: charm you my wife to boot?”
The monarch cried, with fury he shook from head to foot,
Then hurl’d his sword, that, flashing, the young man’s bosom tore,
Whence, ’stead of golden music, issued a stream of gore.
The list’ners all were scatter’d (as when a storm alarms),
The youth breathed out his spirit, clasp’d in his master’s arms;
The corpse within his mantle he wrapp’d, and bound it fast
Upright upon his palfrey, and from the castle pass’d.
Before the lofty portals the grey-hair’d minstrel stands,
His harp, of harps the treasure, he seizes in his hands,
And ’gainst a marble column he casts it with a cry
Through castle and through gardens that echoes awfully:
“Woe to you, halls so haughty! Never let music-strain
Re-echo through thy vaultings, nor harp nor song, again!
Let sighs and groanings only for ever bear the sway,
Until th’ avenging angel has crush’d you in decay!
“Woe to you, fragrant gardens, in golden light of May,
This dead man’s face disfigured I show to you this day:
That you at it may wither, that every well may dry,
That you from hence for ever a stony waste may lie!
“Woe to you, curs’d assassin! of minstrelsy the bane!
Be all thy blood-stain’d struggles for glory’s wreath in vain!
Thy name be it forgotten in night without an end,
And like a last death-rattle with empty vapour blend!”
The minstrel old had spoken, and heaven had heard his cry;
The halls are all in ruins, the walls all prostrate lie;
Witness of pride long vanish’d still stands one column tall,
And this, already shatter’d, to-night to earth may fall.
Instead of fragrant gardens, a desert heather-land!
No tree gives shade, no fountain comes welling through the sand:
No songs, no hero-stories, the monarch’s name rehearse,
For ever lost, forgotten!—Such is the Minstrel’s Curse!
CHRISTIAN NAMES.
“Well, then, let it be John.”
“John is an odious name.”
“Won’t William do?”
“You know I detest it.”
“What do you say to Dick?”
“Dis—gus—ting!”
When a woman pronounces thus, very slowly, syllable by syllable, there is nothing for it but to give in, unless you want to have a scene.
“Well, then, my dear, let it be George Frederick Augustus.”
“You are so stupid,” my little wife broke in. “Why can’t you think of some proper name for the child?”
“That’s exactly what I have been trying to do, my dear,” I mildly retorted, “but there is no pleasing you.”
“How can you say so? You know very well I’ve submitted to have all the children called after that odious old uncle of yours—Gubbins, Gubbins,—until I am quite sick of Gubbins, and I am determined now that baby shall have a pretty name.
The quarrel, good reader, is as old as the time of Aristophanes, and it will go on, we suppose, as long as babies condescend to come into the world. There was a time when people were content to take the first name that presented itself, and it was Tom, Dick, and Harry,—Harry, Dick, and Tom, to the end of the chapter; but either the character of our reading, or the spread of the fine arts, and therefore a better appreciation of the beautiful have made us more fastidious. What a daring thing it would be to call a girl Betty or Sally, and yet, a century ago, these were fashionable names among the upper ten thousand.
It cannot be denied, however, that fashion and mere imitation have a great deal to do with the matter. The name of the reigning sovereign always influences the christenings of a certain per-centage of the population. For three or four generations Georges and Charlottes, and Carolines, were all in vogue; and now we are taking a turn at Victorias and Alberts. But it is only the gregariously disposed that follow the leader in this way, and the fixing a name is really becoming a matter of anxiety to the fastidious. The difficulty I always feel about the matter is lest the name should not fit. Why is it that an ideal will mix itself with every name?
That Mary should suggest everything that is womanly and amiable is simple enough. For these last eighteen hundred years the Roman Catholic Church has identified her sacred name with all the feminine virtues; that Isabella should suggest a proud passionate nature we undoubtedly owe to its southern origin. But why should Ann be a cold, formal, highly-starched old maid? and why, again, should Fanny be, with so few exceptions, the designation of a false-hearted flirt?
Blanche, again, in our mind’s eye, is a proud blonde, with haughty manner and a fair white neck. We may have known many a Blanche with black hair and with narrow forehead, but the fact does not in the slightest destroy the ideal Blanche—the Blanche that should be. Catherine, again, is a proud stately dame that a lover would not like to trifle with. Indeed, when the name is shortened into Kate it gets a little vixenish. Again, Emily is very womanly, with a profusion of light hair, a little lethargic, perhaps, but still desirable. Jane would snap your nose off on the slightest occasion. Julias, in the age that is just past, always performed on the harp, to display their commanding figures, and never condescended to do such a thing as plain work. Martha still follows out her destiny, and attends to the shirt buttons; and a better adjunct