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Beau Austin
By William Ernest Henley
By W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson,
Haymarket Theatre, November 3, 1890.
Spoken by Mr. TREE in the character of Beau Austin.
'To all and singular,' as DRYDEN says,
We bring a fancy of those Georgian days,
Whose style still breathed a faint and fine perfume
Of old-world courtliness and old-world bloom:
When speech was elegant and talk was fit,
For slang had not been canonised as wit;
When manners reigned, when breeding had the wall,
And Women - yes! - were ladies first of all;
When Grace was conscious of its gracefulness,
And man - though Man! - was not ashamed to dress.
A brave formality, a measured ease
Were his - and hers - whose effort was to please.
And to excel in pleasing was to reign,
And, if you sighed, never to sigh in vain.
But then, as now - it may be, something more -
Woman and man were human to the core.
The hearts that throbbed behind that brave attire
Burned with a plenitude of essential fire.
They too could risk, they also could rebel:
They could love wisely - they could love too well.
In that great duel of Sex, that ancient strife
Which is the very central fact of life,
They could - and did - engage it breath for breath,
They could - and did - get wounded unto death.
As at all times since time for us began
Woman was truly woman, man was man,
And joy and sorrow were as much at home
In trifling TUNBRIDGE as in mighty ROME.
Dead - dead and done with! Swift from shine to shade
The roaring generations flit and fade.
To this one, fading, flitting, like the rest,
We come to proffer - be it worst or best -
A sketch, a shadow, of one brave old time;
A hint of what it might have held sublime;
A dream, an idyll, call it what you will,
Of man still Man, and woman - Woman still!
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