MASTER HUGUES OF SAXE-GOTHA 1. HIST, but a word, fair and soft! Forth and be judged, Master Hugues ! Answer the question I've put you so oft — What do you mean by your mountainous fugues } See, we 're alone in the loft, 1, the poor organist here, 2. Hugues, the composer of note Dead, though, and done with, this many a year Let's have a colloquy, something to quote, Make the world prick up its ear! 3. See, the church empties a-pace. Fast they extinguish the lights Hallo, there, sacristan! five minutes' grace! Here's a crank pedal wants setting to rights, Baulks one of holding the base. 4. See, our huge house of the sounds Hushing its hundreds at once, Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds – Oh, you may challenge them, not a response Get the church saints on their rounds! 5. (Saints go their rounds, who shall doubt? Up nave, down chancel, turn transept about, 6. Aloys and Jurien and Just Order things back to their place, Have a sharp eye lest the candlesticks rust, 7. Here's your book, younger folks shelve! Played I not off-hand and runningly, Just now, your masterpiece, hard number twelve? Here's what should strike, could one handle it Help the axe, give it a helve! [cunningly. 8. Page after page as I played, Every bar's rest where one wipes Sweat from one's brow, I looked up and surveyed 9. Sure you were wishful to speak, You, with brow ruled like a score, Yes, and eyes buried in pits on each cheek Like two great breves as they wrote them of yore Each side that bar, your straight beak! Still, couldst thou take my intent, Know what procured me our Company's votes Masters being lauded and sciolists shent, Parted the sheep from the goats!" 11. Well then, speak up, never flinch! - Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch I believe in you, but that's not enough. Give my conviction a clinch! 12. First you deliver your phrase -Nothing propound, that I see, Fit in itself for much blame or much praise - 13. Straight must a Third interpose, In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose, Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did: Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished Back to One, goes the case bandied! 15. One says his say with a difference Ail now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance Now there's a truce, all 's subdued, self-restrainingFive, though, stands out all the stiffer hence. One is incisive, corrosive— 16. Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant — Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant— Five... O Danaides, O Sieve! 17. Now, they ply axes and crowbars Now, they prick pins at a tissue Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue? Where is our gain at the Two-bars? Est fuga, volvitur rota! 18. On we drift. Where looms the dim port? One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota — Something is gained, if one caught but the importshow it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha! 19. What with affirming, denying, Holding, risposting, subjoining, All's like ... it's like... for an instance I'm trying.. |