Ballads in Blue China
By Andrew Lang
()
About this ebook
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a Scottish editor, poet, author, literary critic, and historian. He is best known for his work regarding folklore, mythology, and religion, for which he had an extreme interest in. Lang was a skilled and respected historian, writing in great detail and exploring obscure topics. Lang often combined his studies of history and anthropology with literature, creating works rich with diverse culture. He married Leonora Blanche Alleyne in 1875. With her help, Lang published a prolific amount of work, including his popular series, Rainbow Fairy Books.
Read more from Andrew Lang
Fables and Fairy Tales: Aesop's Fables, Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and The Blue Fairy Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Fairy Books of Andrew Lang Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Classic Children's Stories (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5ARABIAN NIGHTS: Andrew Lang's 1001 Nights & R. L. Stevenson's New Arabian Nights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights (Andrew Lang) + New Arabian Nights (R. L. Stevenson) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwelve Color Fairy Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Illustrated Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Arabian Nights: One Thousand and One Nights: New Revised Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fairy Books of All Colours - Complete Series: Books 1-12 (Illustrated Edition): 400+ Tales in One Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHistory of English Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeauty and the Beast – All Four Versions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5King Arthur: Tales from the Round Table Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Story of Joan of Arc Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blue Poetry Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFolklore and Mythology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tales of Troy and Greece Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fables and Fairy Tales: Aesop's Fables, Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales, Grimm's Fairy Tales, and The Blue Fairy Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOxford Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChristmas Carols & Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn Knox and the Reformation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Ballads in Blue China
Related ebooks
Ballades & Rhymes from Ballades in Blue China and Rhymes a la Mode Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Death-Wake or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBallads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth: Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems by Adam Lindsay Gordon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOscar Wilde – The Complete Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOscar Wilde: The Complete Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Heart of England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Arabian Nights: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dance and Skylark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThomas Hardy: Collected Works: 15 Novels, 53 Short Stories, 650+ Poems, Essays & Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry Of Dame Edith Sitwell: "I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poems and Verses Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry Hour - Volume 3: Time For The Soul Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry Of GK Chesterton Volume 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Well-Beloved by Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTHOMAS HARDY Ultimate Collection: 15 Novels, 53 Short Stories & 650+ Poems (Illustrated Edition): Including Essays & Plays: Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, Life's Little Ironies, A Group of Noble Dames, The Dynasts, Moments of Vision, Wessex Tales & Poems… Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDryden (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): English Men of Letters Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wrecker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Daltons: Three Roads In Life: Historical Novel - Complete Edition (Vol. 1&2) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes — Volume 01: Earlier Poems (1830-1836) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Balladists Famous Scots Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blue Poetry Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOrlando (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poets of the 19th Century - Volume III – John Keats to George William Russell: Volume III – John Keats to George William Russell Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHelen with the High Hand by Arnold Bennett - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDaily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rumi: The Art of Loving Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tradition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Ballads in Blue China
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Ballads in Blue China - Andrew Lang
INTRODUCTION
Thirty years have passed, like a watch in the night, since the earlier of the two sets of verses here reprinted, Ballades in Blue China, was published. At first there were but twenty-two Ballades; ten more were added later. They appeared in a little white vellum wrapper, with a little blue Chinese singer copied from a porcelain jar; and the frontispiece was a little design by an etcher now famous.
Thirty years ago blue china was a kind of fetish in some circles, aesthetic circles, of which the balladist was not a member.
The ballade was an old French form of verse, in France revived by Theodore de Banville, and restored to an England which had long forgotten the Middle Ages, by my friends Mr. Austin Dobson and Mr. Edmund Gosse. They, so far as I can trust my memory, were the first to reintroduce these pleasant old French nugae, while an anonymous author let loose upon the town a whole winged flock of ballades of amazing dexterity. This unknown balladist was Mr. Henley; perhaps he was the first Englishman who ever burst into a double ballade, and his translations of two of Villon's ballades into modern thieves' slang were marvels of dexterity. Mr. Swinburne wrote a serious ballade, but the form, I venture to think, is not 'wholly serious,' of its nature, in modern days; and he did not persevere. Nor did the taste for these trifles long endure. A good ballade is almost as rare as a good sonnet, but a middling ballade is almost as easily written as the majority of sonnets. Either form readily becomes mechanical, cheap and facile. I have heard Mr. George Meredith improvise a sonnet, a Petrarchian sonnet, obedient to the rules, without pen and paper. He spoke 'and the numbers came'; he sonneted as easily as a living poet, in his Eton days, improvised Latin elegiacs and Greek hexameters.
The sonnet endures. Mr. Horace Hutchinson wrote somewhere: When you have read a sonnet, you feel that though there does not seem to be much of it, you have done a good deal, as when you have eaten a cold hard-boiled egg.
Still people keep on writing sonnets, because the sonnet is wholly serious. In an English sonnet you cannot easily be flippant of pen. A few great poets have written immortal sonnets—among them are Milton, Wordsworth, and Keats. Thus the sonnet is a thing which every poet thinks it worth while to try at; like Felix Arvers, he may be made immortal by a single sonnet. Even I have written one too many! Every anthologist wants to anthologise it (The Odyssey); it never was a favourite of my own, though it had the honour to be kindly spoken of by Mr. Matthew Arnold.
On the other hand, no man since Francois Villon has been immortalised by a single ballade—Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
To speak in any detail about these poor ballades would be to indite a part of an autobiography. Looking back at the little book, 'what memories it stirs' in one to whom
'Fate has done this wrong,
That I should write too much and live too long.'
The Ballade of the Tweed, and the Rhymes a la Mode, were dedicated to the dearest of kinsmen, a cricketer and angler. The Ballade of Roulette was inscribed to R. R., a gallant veteran of the Indian