Publisher's Synopsis
Selected by Austin Dobson from Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, Ballades in Blue China, and from verses previously unprinted or not collected.There's a joy without canker or cark, There's a pleasure eternally new, 'T is to gloat on the glaze and the markOf china that's ancient and blue;Unchipp'd, all the centuries throughIt has pass'd, since the chime of it rang, And they fashion'd it, figure and hue, In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.These dragons (their tails, you remark, Into bunches of gillyflowers grew), -When Noah came out of the ark, Did these lie in wait for his crew?They snorted, they snapp'd, and they slew, They were mighty of fin and of fang, And their portraits Celestials drewIn the reign of the Emperor Hwangs.Here's a pot with a cot in a park, In a park where the peach-blossoms blew, Where the lovers eloped in the dark, Lived, died, and were changed into twoBright birds that eternally flewThrough the boughs of the may, as they sang;'T is a tale was undoubtedly trueIn the reign of the E
