DEAR OLD LONDON

Come back, thou ghost of ruddy host,
From Pluto's misty shore;
Renew to-night the keen delight

Of by-gone years once more;
Brew for this merry, motley horde,
And serve the steaming cheer;
And grant that I may lurk hard by,
To see the mirth, and hear.

Ah, me! I dream what things may seem
To others childish vain,

And yet at night 't is my delight
To walk St. Martin's Lane;
For, in the light of other days,
I walk with those I love,

And all the time St. Martin's chime
Makes piteous moan above.

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DEAR OLD LONDON

WHEN I was broke in London in the fall of '89,

I chanced to spy in Oxford Street this tantalizing sign"A Splendid Horace cheap for Cash!" Of course I had to look Upon the vaunted bargain, and it was a noble book!

A finer one I've never seen, nor can I hope to see,

The first edition, richly bound, and clean as clean can be,

And, just to think, for three-pounds-ten I might have had that Pine, When I was broke in London in the fall of '89!

Down at Noseda's, in the Strand, I found, one fateful day,
A portrait that I pined for as only maniac may,-

A print of Madame Vestris (she flourished years ago,
Was Bartolozzi's daughter and a thoroughbred, you know).
A clean and handsome print it was, and cheap at thirty bob,-
That's what I told the salesman, as I choked a rising sob;
But I hung around Noseda's as it were a holy shrine,
When I was broke in London in the fall of '89!

At Davey's, in Great Russell Street, were autographs galore,
And Mr. Davey used to let me con that precious store.

Sometimes I read what warriors wrote, sometimes a king's command,
But oftener still a poet's verse, writ in a meagre hand.

Lamb, Byron, Addison, and Burns, Pope, Johnsen, Swift, and Scott,

It needed but a paltry sum to comprehend the lot;

Yet, though Friend Davey marked 'em down, what could I but decline?

For I was broke in London in the fall of '89.

Of antique swords and spears I saw a vast and dazzling heap
That Curio Fenton offered me at prices passing cheap;
And, oh, the quaint old bureaus, and the warming-pans of brass,
And the lovely hideous freaks I found in pewter and in glass!
And, oh, the sideboards, candlesticks, the cracked old china plates.
The clocks and spoons from Amsterdam that antedate all dates!
Of such superb monstrosities I found an endless mine
When I was broke in London in the fall of '89.

O ye that hanker after boons that others idle by,

The battered things that please the soul, though they may vex

the eye,

The silver plate and crockery all sanctified with grime,

The oaken stuff that has defiled the tooth of envious Time,

The musty tomes, the speckled prints, the mildewed bills of play,
And other costly relics of malodorous decay,-

Ye only can appreciate what agony was mine
When I was broke in London in the fall of '89.

When, in the course of natural things, I go to my reward,
Let no imposing epitaph my martyrdoms record;
Neither in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, nor any classic tongue,
Let my ten thousand triumphs over human griefs be sung;
But in plain Anglo-Saxon-that he may know who seeks
What agonizing pangs I've had while on the hunt for freaks-
Let there be writ upon the slab that marks my grave this line:
"Deceased was broke in London in the fall of '89."

THE CLINK OF THE ICE

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THE CLINK OF THE ICE

NOTABLY fond of music, I dote on a sweeter tone

Than ever the harp has uttered or ever the lute has known. When I wake at five in the morning with a feeling in my head Suggestive of mild excesses before I retired to bed;

When a small but fierce volcano vexes me sore inside,

And my throat and mouth are furred with a fur that seemeth a buffalo hide,

How gracious those dews of solace that over my senses fall

At the clink of the ice in the pitcher the boy brings up the hall!

Oh, is it the gaudy ballet, with features I cannot name,
That kindles in virile bosoms that slow but devouring flame?
Or is it the midnight supper, eaten before we retire,

That presently by combustion setteth us all afire?

Or is it the cheery magnum?-nay, I'll not chide the cup
That makes the meekest mortal anxious to whoop things up:
Yet, what the cause soever, relief comes when we call,-
Relief with that rapturous clinkety-clink that clinketh alike for all.

I've dreamt of the fiery furnace that was one vast bulk of flame,

And that I was Abednego a-wallowing in that same;

And I've dreamt I was a crater, possessed of a mad desire

To vomit molten lava, and to snort big gobs of fire;

I've dreamt I was Roman candles and rockets that fizzed and screamed,

In short, I have dreamt the cussedest dreams that ever a human dreamed:

But all the red-hot fancies were scattered quick as a wink
When the spirit within that pitcher went clinking its clinkety-clink.

Boy, why so slow in coming with that gracious, saving cup?
Oh, haste thee to the succor of the man who is burning up!
See how the ice bobs up and down, as if it wildly strove

To reach its grace to the wretch who feels like a red-hot kitchen stove!

The piteous clinks it clinks methinks should thrill you through

and through:

An erring soul is wanting drink, and he wants it p. d. q.!

And, lo! the honest pitcher, too, falls in so dire a fret

That its pallid form is presently bedewed with a chilly sweat.

May blessings be showered upon the man who first devised this drink

That happens along at five A. M. with its rapturous clinkety-clink!
I never have felt the cooling flood go sizzling down my throat
But what I vowed to hymn a hymn to that clinkety-clink devote;
So now, in the prime of my manhood, I polish this lyric gem
For the uses of all good fellows who are thirsty at five A. M.,
But specially for those fellows who have known the pleasing thrall
Of the clink of the ice in the pitcher the boy brings up the hall.

THE BELLS OF NOTRE DAME

WHAT though the radiant thoroughfare
Teems with a noisy throng?
What though men bandy everywhere
The ribald jest and song?
Over the din of oaths and cries

Broodeth a wondrous calm,
And 'mid that solemn stillness rise

The bells of Notre Dame.

"Heed not, dear Lord," they seem to say,

"Thy weak and erring child;

And thou, O gentle Mother, pray

That God be reconciled;

And on mankind, O Christ, our King,

Pour out Thy gracious balm,”.

"T is thus they plead and thus they sing,
Those bells of Notre Dame.

LOVER'S LANE, SAINT JO

And so, methinks, God, bending down.

To ken the things of earth,

Heeds not the mockery of the town

Or cries of ribald mirth;

For ever soundeth in His ears

A penitential psalm,—

"T is thy angelic voice He hears,

O bells of Notre Dame!

Plead on, O bells, that thy sweet voice
May still forever be

An intercession to rejoice
Benign divinity;

And that thy tuneful grace may fall

Like dew, a quickening balm,

Upon the arid hearts of all,

O bells of Notre Dame!

LOVER'S LANE, SAINT JO

SAINT Jo, Buchanan County,

Is leagues and leagues away;
And I sit in the gloom of this rented room,
And pine to be there to-day.

Yes, with London fog around me
And the bustling to and fro,
I am fretting to be across the sea
In Lover's Lane, Saint Jo.

I would have a brown-eyed maiden

Go driving once again;

And I'd sing the song, as we snailed along,
That I sung to that maiden then:

I purposely say, "as we snailed along,"
For a proper horse goes slow

In those leafy aisles, where Cupid smiles,
In Lover's Lane, Saint Jo.

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