When those who criticised it were invited themselves to treat the same theme in more worthy fashion, they willingly enough agreed, and the results here subjoined were spread upon the minutes of the club.
With a lady-like air of reserve tempered by self-respect, Mrs. Felicia Hemans presented her version:
The Marcel waves dash'd high
Where the puffs and frizzes crossed;
And just above a roguish eye
A little curl was tossed.
And that little curl hung down
O'er a brow like a holy saint;
Her goodness was beyond renown,
And yet—there was a taint.
Ay, call it deadly sin,
The temper that she had;
But that Little Girl just gloried in
Freedom to be real bad!
Robert Browning gave the subject much thought and responded at length:
Who will may hear the poet's story told.
His story? Who believes me shall behold
The Little Girl, tricked out with ringolet,
Or fringe, or pompadour, or what you will,
Switch, bang, rat, puff—odzooks, man! I know not
What women call the hanks o' hair they wear!
But that same curl, beau-catcher, love-lock, frizz.
(Perchance hot-ironed—perchance 'twas bandolined;
Mayhap those rubber squirmers gave it shape—
I wot not.) But that corkscrew of a curl
Hung plumb, true, straight, accurate, at mid-brow,
Nor swerved a hair's breadth to the right or left.
Aught of her other tresses none may know.
Now go we straitly on. And undertake
To sound the humor of the Little Girl.
Ha! what's the note? Hark here. When she was good,
She was seraphic; hypersuperfine.
So good she made the saints seem scalawags;
An angel child; a paramaragon.
Halt! Turn! When she elected to be bad,
Black fails to paint the depths of ignomin,
The fearsome sins, the crimes unspeakable,
The deep abysses of her evilment.
Hist! Tell 't wi' bated breath! One day she let
A rosy tongue-tip from red lips peep forth!
Can viciousness cap that? Horrid's the word.
Yet there she is. There is that Little Girl,
Her goodness and her badness, side by side,
Like bacon, streak o' fat and streak o' lean.
Ah, Fatalist, she must be ever so.
Mr. E.A. Poe declared that he wrote his lines without any trouble at all, as he used to know the Little Girl personally:
'Twas not very many years ago,
At Seahurst-By-The-Sea,
A little girl had a little curl—
Her name was Annabel Lee.
And right in the middle of Annabel's brow
That curl would always be.
She was so good, oh, she was so good
At Seahurst-By-The-Sea!
She was good with a goodness more than good,
Was beautiful Annabel Lee,
With such goodness the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her of me.
But her badness was stronger by far than the good,
Like many far older than she,
Like many far wiser than she;
And neither the angels in heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever the good from the bad
In the soul of Annabel Lee,
The beautiful Annabel Lee.
Then Mr. Stevenson went out into his own garden and plucked this:
In winter, I go up at night
And curl that curl by candle-light;
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to curl it twice a day.
When I am good, I seem to be
As good as peaches on the tree;
But when I'm bad I've awful ways,
I'm horrid, everybody says.
And does it not seem hard to you,
I have to choose between the two?
When I'm not happy, good and glad,
I have to be so awful bad!
Mr. Kipling took a real interest in the work and produced the following:
"What is the gas-stove going for?"
Asked Files-On-Parade.
"To curl my hair, to curl my hair?"
His Little Sister said.
"What makes you curl so tight, so tight?"
Asked Files-On-Parade.
"I'm thinkin' 'twill be damp to-night,"
His Little Sister said.
"For you know that when I'm good, I'm just as good as I can be.
And when I'm bad, there's nobody can be as bad as me.
So I'm thinkin' I'll be very good to-night, because, you see,
I'm thinkin' I'll be horrid in the morning."
Mr. Hood was in a reminiscent mood, so he looked backward:
I remember, I remember,
That curl I used to wear;
It cost a dollar ninety-eight
(It was the best of hair).
It always stayed right in its place,
It never went astray;
But now, I sometimes wish the wind
Had blown that curl away.
I remember, I remember,
How good I used to be;
Why, St. Cecelia at her best
Was not as good as me.
I never tore my pinafore,
Or got my slippers wet;
I let my brother steal my cake—
That boy is living yet!
I remember, I remember,
How bad I've sometimes been;
How all my little childish tricks
Were counted fearful sin.
I'm glad I cut up, anyway,
But still 'tis little joy
To know I could have played worse pranks
If I had been a boy.
Mr. Wordsworth took it quietly:
I met a gentle Little Girl,
She was sixteen years, she said;
Her hair was thick; that same old curl
Was hanging from her head.
"You're very, very good, you say;
And you look good to me,
Yet you are bad. Tell me, I pray,
Sweet maid, how that may be?"
Then did the Little Girl reply
(The curl bobbed on her forehead),
"When I am good, I'm good as pie,
And when I'm bad, I'm horrid."
At the next meeting of the Re-Echo Club there was achieved a vindication of the limerick. "It has been said," remarked the President of the Re-Echo Club, "by ignorant and undiscerning would-be critics that the Limerick is not among the classic and best forms of poetry, and, indeed, some have gone so far as to say that it is not poetry at all.
"A brief consideration of its claims to preëminence among recognized forms of verse will soon convince any intelligent reader of its superlative worth and beauty.
"As a proof of this, let us consider the following Limerick, which in the opinion of connoisseurs is the best one ever written:
There was a young lady of Niger,
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They came back from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.
Now let us compare this exquisite bit of real poesy with what Chaucer has written on the same theme:
A mayde ther ben, in Niger born and bredde;
Hire merye smyle went neere aboute hire hedde.
Uponne a beeste shee rood, a tyger gaye,
And sikerly shee laughen on hire waye.
Anon, as it bifel, bak from the ryde
Ther came, his sadel hangen doone bisyde,
The tyger. On his countenaunce the whyle
Ther ben behelde a gladnesse and a smyle.
Again, Austin Dobson chose to throw off the thing in triolet form:
She went for a ride,
That young lady of Niger;
Her smile was quite wide
As she went for a ride;
But she came back inside,
With the smile on the tiger!
She went for a ride,
That young lady of Niger.
Rossetti, with his inability to refrain from refrains, turned out this:
In Niger dwelt a lady fair,
(Bacon and eggs and a bar o' soap!)
Who smiled 'neath tangles of her hair,
As her steed began his steady lope.
(You like this style, I hope!)
On and on they sped and on,
(Bacon and eggs and a bar o' soap!)
On and on and on and on;
(You see I've not much scope.)
E'en ere they loped the second mile,
The tiger 'gan his mouth to ope;
Anon he halted for a while;
Then went on with a pleasant smile,
(Bacon and eggs and a bar o' soap!)
Omar looked at the situation philosophically, and summed up his views in such characteristic lines as these.
Why if the Soul can fling the Dust aside
And, smiling, on a Tiger blithely ride,
Were't not a Shame—were't not a Shame for him
In stupid Niger tamely to abide?
Strange, is it not? that, of the Myriads who
Before us rode the Sandy Desert through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road
Which to discover we ride smiling, too.
We are no other than a moving Row
Of Magic Niger-shapes that come and go
Round with the Smile-illumined Tiger held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
Tennyson saw a dramatic opportunity, and gloried in his chance, thus:
Half a league, half a league,
On the big tiger,
Rode with a smiling face
The lady of Niger.
Mad rushed the noble steed,
Smiled she and took no heed;
Smiled at the breakneck speed
Of the big tiger.
Boldly they plunged and swayed,
Fearlessly and unafraid,—
Tiger and lovely maid,
Fair and beguiling;
Flash'd she her sunny smiles,
Flash'd o'er the sunlit miles;
Then they rode back, but not—
Not the same smiling!
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made,
Riding from Niger!
Honor the ride they made!
Honor the smiles displayed,
Lady and Tiger!
Kipling, of course, seized the theme for a fine and stirring Barrack-Room Ballad:
"What is the lady smiling for?"
Said Files-On-Parade.
"She's going for a tiger ride,"
The Color-Sergeant said;
"What makes her smile so gay, so gay?"
Said Files-On-Parade;
"She likes to go for tiger rides,"
The Color-Sergeant said.
"For she's riding on the tiger, you can see his stately stride;
When they're returning home again, she'll take a place inside;
And on the tiger's face will be the smile so bland and wide,
But she's riding on the tiger in the morning."
Browning was pleased with the subject and did the best he could with it, along these lines:
THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER:
(The Tiger speaks.)
I said, "Then, Dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length your fate you know,
Since nothing all your smile avails,
Since all your life seems meant for fails,
Henceforth you ride inside."
Who knows what's best? Ah, who can tell?
I loved the lady. Therefore,—well,—
I shuddered. Yet it had to be.
And so together, I and she
Ride, ride, forever ride.
Swinburne spread himself thusly:
O marvellous, mystical maiden,
With the way of the wind on the wing;
Low laughter thy lithe lips hath laden,
Thy smile is a Song of the Spring.
O typical, tropical tiger,
With wicked and wheedlesome wiles;
O lovely lost lady of Niger,
Our Lady of Smiles.
Edgar Allan Poe put it this way: