Ballads By William Makepeace Thackeray Part 35

A gentleman, or old or young!

(Bear kindly with my humble lays); The sacred chorus first was sung Upon the first of Christmas days: The shepherds heard it overhead-- The joyful angels raised it then: Glory to Heaven on high, it said, And peace on earth to gentle men.

My song, save this, is little worth; I lay the weary pen aside, And wish you health, and love, and mirth, As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

As fits the holy Christmas birth, Be this, good friends, our carol still-- Be peace on earth, be peace on earth, To men of gentle will.

* These verses were printed at the end of a Christmas Book (1848- 9), "Dr. Birch and his Young Friends."

** C.B ob. 29th November, 1848. aet. 42.

VANITAS VANITATUM.

How spake of old the Royal Seer?

(His text is one I love to treat on.) This life of ours he said is sheer Mataiotes Mataioteton.

O Student of this gilded Book, Declare, while musing on its pages, If truer words were ever spoke By ancient, or by modern sages!

The various authors' names but note,*

French, Spanish, English, Russians, Germans: And in the volume polyglot, Sure you may read a hundred sermons!

What histories of life are here, More wild than all romancers' stories; What wondrous transformations queer, What homilies on human glories!

What theme for sorrow or for scorn!

What chronicle of Fate's surprises-- Of adverse fortune n.o.bly borne, Of chances, changes, ruins, rises!

Of thrones upset, and sceptres broke, How strange a record here is written!

Of honors, dealt as if in joke; Of brave desert unkindly smitten.

How low men were, and how they rise!

How high they were, and how they tumble!

O vanity of vanities!

O laughable, pathetic jumble!

Here between honest Janin's joke And his Turk Excellency's firman, I write my name upon the book: I write my name--and end my sermon.

O Vanity of vanities!

How wayward the decrees of Fate are; How very weak the very wise, How very small the very great are!

What mean these stale moralities, Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble?

Why rail against the great and wise, And tire us with your ceaseless grumble?

Pray choose us out another text, O man morose and narrow-minded!

Come turn the page--I read the next, And then the next, and still I find it.

Read here how Wealth aside was thrust, And Folly set in place exalted; How Princes footed in the dust, While lackeys in the saddle vaulted.

Though thrice a thousand years are past, Since David's son, the sad and splendid, The weary King Ecclesiast, Upon his awful tablets penned it,--

Methinks the text is never stale, And life is every day renewing Fresh comments on the old old tale Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin.

Hark to the Preacher, preaching still He lifts his voice and cries his sermon, Here at St. Peter's of Cornhill, As yonder on the Mount of Hermon;

For you and me to heart to take (O dear beloved brother readers) To-day as when the good King spake Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars.

* Between a page by Jules Janin, and a poem by the Turkish Amba.s.sador, in Madame de R----'s alb.u.m, containing the autographs of kings, princes, poets, marshals, musicians, diplomatists, statesmen, artists, and men of letters of all nations.