WITH PIPE ALIGHT

Southland Times, Issue 18927, 28 April 1923, Page 9

WITH PIPE ALIGHT

THE FAREWELL.

(By

“Criticus.”)

Wc had been sitting for three preasant hours beside an aromatic fire, log after Ing of scented manuka giving generously of odorous heat, and as the flames leapt and died in the broad chimney we talked fondly of other hearths and other fires. Outside there was enough wind to make a blaze welcome and heavy tobacco smoke congenial. It was a time and a place for those confidences which friends exchange without any consciousness of seif-revela-tion, and we went back through the years, back over the broad wilderness of waters to the land in which were embedded the roots of his ancestors and mine.

Along the trim lanes of the English countryside we wandered, over the greeny downs and through the sturdier beauties of northern Wales, where we talked to gypsies, odorous of romance and more earthly things, squatting outside quaint inns and making hearty meals on the ale of the locality, accompanied by the bread and cheese made under the same thatched roof reared above great oak beams, gloriously blackened by the fumes and dust of the ages, snouting to the enjoyment of ourselves and the onlookers ancient ballads with which minstrels centuries and centuries before earned their suppers and made ready for history and Shakespeare. Do I say “we”? In the flesh I had never been on those glorious expeditions into the familiar by-ways of England and Wales, in the tracks but not in the footprints of Borrow; but that night I travelled the adventure-filled ways and heard my friend rolling out the exciting stanzas of “The Battle of Chevy Chase,” when The Percy owt of Northomberlande, And a vowe to God mayd he, That he wolde hunt? in the mountayns Of Chyviat within days Hire, In the niauger of daughtie Dogles And all that ever with him be. The fattise hartes 'n all Chevfat He sayd he wold kill, and vary them away: Be my feth, sayd the dougheti Dogles again I will let that hontyng it that 1 may. The ancient spelling is not too difficult for understanding and the only word to give us pause is “mauger” which we may translate as “spire.” I heard the thrills of Chevy Chase, of Sir Patrick Spens, King Leir, Sir Aldingar and other heroes of those old ballads which made entertainment at the festive boards before the Stuarts settled in England. In front of those sweet-smell-ing Jogs, too, I heard my friend’s friend pleasantly inquiring of some old gypsy hag concerning her own people, meeting her silence with an eruption of Romany oaths and driving her into friendly eloquence. I could not repeat them but the thunderous music of the cascade made me long to learn Romany. My friend went back to those days of Borrovian adventure and I went with him—Oh, how eagerly!

When we had exhausted ourselves in thff tramps through Wales, London called to us and in the pages of some old copies of the Academy—long years before Lord Alfred Douglas got hold of it—we revived old names and memories of Noble, to whom William Watson, Le Galliene among others owed to much in that Liverpool school in which my friend. I suspected, was a unit. The literary efforts of the pygmies who “growed” into giants were pored over and we harkened to great voices which then were struggling to be heard. It was sweet to be brought into touch with them Gy a hand which had clasped theirs and had matched pens with theirs. And then by some unaccounted turn—perhaps some odd note in the Academy—we turned to a love common to us and to most people who can respond to beautiful music—Omar Khayyam. Warmed by a New Zealand blaze we told over the jewels of that nacklace wrought first under Persian skies and finally polished by an Irishman in England. I shall never forget the significance of the two quatrains we were enjoying as the signal for our parting sounded in the night: A Moment’s Halt—a momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the "Waste— And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reached The Nothing It set out from—Oh, make haste ; Would you that spangle of Existence spend About The Secret?—quick about it, Friend! A Hair perhaps divides the Fales and True— And upon what, prithee, may life depend? The clocks were then booming out the hour and it times for us to claw our way into overcoats and mufflers, leaving the hearth with its litter of recollections, for the out-of-doors where the uncharitable wind, whining and cursing in alternative of hate made remembrances impossible. It is a peculiarity of men that, no matter how unfriendly the conditions may be, they will stand at a parting corner and linger happily as a last few seconds linger in minutes and hours—it is the distaste for separation w’hich all good friends fell when the last moments come. We waited a little while, bringing to a portesting conclusion our discussion of Omar and Fitzgerald. And then we turned from the past to the future. He was anxious to know what I thought would happen in Europe, but I was too ignorant to advise and too timid to prophecy. “Let us see what the morrow will bring,” I said to {make my retreat as dignified as possible. “The morrow? Ah, it is the morrow that brings the good things to us,” he said as he turned away. “The past has our sorrows; the future is always good.” With that declaration ofoptimism he moved off, and I breasted the cqld wind from the south, while ringing in my ears with the wind came the Rubaiyat’s. To-morrow! Why To-morrow I may bo Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years. I paused and looked back. He was striding away happily, walking to the distance. And then he entered the shadows and I saw him no more.