Hemans Miscellaneous Poetry 2/Jeu d'Esprit
JEU-D' ESPRIT ON THE WORD "BARB."
["It was either during the present or a future visit to the same friends,[1] that the jeu-d'esprit was produced which Mrs Hemans used to call her 'sheet of forgeries' on the use of the word Barb. A gentleman had requested her to furnish him with some authorities from the old English writers, proving that this term was in use as applied to a steed. She very shortly supplied him with the following imitations, which were written down almost impromptu: the mystification succeeded perfectly, and was not discovered until some time afterwards."—Memoir, p. 43.]
The warrior donn'd his well-worn garb,
And proudly waved his crest,
He mounted on his jet-black barb,
And put his lance in rest. Percy's Reliques.
Eftsoons the wight, withouten more delay,
Spurr'd his brown barb, and rode full swiftly on his way.
Spenser.
Hark! was it not the trumpet's voice I heard?
The soul of battle is awake within me!
The fate of ages and of empires hangs
On this dread hour. Why am I not in arms?
Bring my good lance, caparison my steed?
Base, idle grooms! are ye in league against me?
Haste with my barb, or, by the holy saints,
Te shall not live to saddle him to-morrow!
Massinger.
No sooner had the pearl-shedding fingers of the young Aurora tremulously unlocked the oriental portals of the golden horizon, than the graceful flower of chivalry and the bright cynosure of ladies' eyes—he of the dazzling breastplate and swanlike plume—sprang impatiently from the couch of slumber, and eagerly mounted the noble barb presented to him by the Emperor of Aspramontania. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia.
See'st thou yon chief whose presence seems to rule
The storm of battle? Lo! where'er he moves
Death follows. Carnage sits upon his crest—
Fate on his sword is throned—and his white barb,
As a proud courser of Apollo's chariot,
Seems breathing fire.Potter's Æschylus.
Oh! bonnie look'd my ain true knight,
His barb so proudly reining;
I watch'd him till my tearfu' sight
Grew amaist dim wi' straining.
Border Minstrelsy.
Why, he can heel the lavolt, and wind a fiery barb, as well as any gallant in Christendom. He’s the very pink and mirror of accomplishment. Shakspeare.
Fair star of beauty's heaven! to call thee mine,
All other joys I joyously would yield;
My knightly crest, my bounding barb resign,
For the poor shepherd's crook and daisied field;
For courts or camps no wish my soul would prove,
So thou wouldst live with me, and be my love!
Earl of Surrey's Poems.
For thy dear love my weary soul hath grown
Heedless of youthful sports: I seek no more
Or joyous dance, or music's thrilling tone,
Or joys that once could charm in minstrel lore,
Or knightly tilt where steel-clad champions meet,
Borne on impetuous barbs to bleed at beauty's feet.
Shakspeare's Sonnets.
As a warrior clad
In sable arms, like chaos dull and sad,
But mounted on a barb as white
As the fresh new-born light,—
So the black night too soon
Came riding on the bright and silver moon,
Whose radiant heavenly ark
Made all the clouds, beyond her influence, seem
E'en more than doubly dark,
Mourning, all widow'd of her glorious beam.
Cowley.
- ↑ "The family of the late Henry Park, Esq., Wavertree Lodge, near Liverpool.