Phantasmagoria and Other Poems | Page 8

groaned "Here I and Sorrow sit:
Let us lament together!"
I urged "You're wasting time, you know:
Delay will spoil the
venison."
"My heart is wasted with my woe!
There is no rest--in
Venice, on
The Bridge of Sighs!" she quoted low
From Byron and
from Tennyson.
I need not tell of soup and fish
In solemn silence swallowed,
The
sobs that ushered in each dish,
And its departure followed,
Nor yet
my suicidal wish
To BE the cheese I hollowed.
Some desperate attempts were made
To start a conversation;

"Madam," the sportive Brown essayed,
"Which kind of recreation,

Hunting or fishing, have you made
Your special occupation?"
Her lips curved downwards instantly,
As if of india-rubber.

"Hounds IN FULL CRY I like," said she:
(Oh how I longed to snub
her!)
"Of fish, a whale's the one for me,
IT IS SO FULL OF
BLUBBER!"
The night's performance was "King John."
"It's dull," she wept, "and

so-so!"
Awhile I let her tears flow on,
She said they soothed her
woe so!
At length the curtain rose upon
'Bombastes Furioso.'
In vain we roared; in vain we tried
To rouse her into laughter:
Her
pensive glances wandered wide
From orchestra to rafter -
"TIER
UPON TIER!" she said, and sighed;
And silence followed after.
A VALENTINE
[Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see him
when he came, but didn't seem to miss him if he stayed away.]
And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,

They leave us shuddering and aghast,
With anguish smarting?
And
cannot friends be firm and fast,
And yet bear parting?
And must I then, at Friendship's call,
Calmly resign the little all

(Trifling, I grant, it is and small)
I have of gladness,
And lend my
being to the thrall
Of gloom and sadness?
And think you that I should be dumb,
And full dolorum omnium,

Excepting when YOU choose to come
And share my dinner?
At
other times be sour and glum
And daily thinner?
Must he then only live to weep,
Who'd prove his friendship true and
deep
By day a lonely shadow creep,
At night-time languish,
Oft
raising in his broken sleep
The moan of anguish?
The lover, if for certain days
His fair one be denied his gaze,
Sinks
not in grief and wild amaze,
But, wiser wooer,
He spends the time
in writing lays,
And posts them to her.
And if the verse flow free and fast,
Till even the poet is aghast,
A
touching Valentine at last
The post shall carry,
When thirteen days
are gone and past

Of February.

Farewell, dear friend, and when we meet,
In desert waste or crowded
street,
Perhaps before this week shall fleet,
Perhaps to-morrow.
I
trust to find YOUR heart the seat
Of wasting sorrow.
THE THREE VOICES
The First Voice
He trilled a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:

There came a breeze from off the sea:
It passed athwart the glooming flat -
It fanned his forehead as he sat -

It lightly bore away his hat,
All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,

Frowning as darkly as she could.
With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,

Right through the centre of the crown.
Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,

She took it up and gave it him.
A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude

In words just short of being rude:
For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,

And he was going out to dine.
"To dine!" she sneered in acid tone.
"To bend thy being to a bone

Clothed in a radiance not its own!"
The tear-drop trickled to his chin:
There was a meaning in her grin

That made him feel on fire within.
"Term it not 'radiance,'" said he:
"'Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner

is Dinner: Tea is Tea."
And she "Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find
increase.
Say 'Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.'"
He moaned: he knew not what to say.
The thought "That I could get
away!"
Strove with the thought "But I must stay.
"To dine!" she shrieked in dragon-wrath.
"To swallow wines all foam
and froth!
To simper at a table-cloth!
"Say, can thy noble spirit stoop
To join the gormandising troup

Who find a solace in the soup?
"Canst thou desire or pie or puff?
Thy well-bred manners were
enough,
Without such gross material stuff."
"Yet well-bred men," he faintly said,
"Are not willing to be fed:

Nor are they well without the bread."
Her visage scorched him ere she spoke:
"There are," she said, "a kind
of folk
Who have no horror of a joke.
"Such wretches live: they take their share
Of common earth and
common air:
We come across them here and there:
"We grant them--there is no escape -
A sort of semi-human shape

Suggestive of the man-like Ape."
"In all such theories," said he,
"One fixed exception there must be.

That is, the Present Company."
Baffled, she gave a wolfish bark:
He, aiming blindly in the dark,

With random shaft had pierced the mark.
She felt that her defeat was plain,
Yet madly strove with might and

main
To get the upper hand again.
Fixing her eyes upon the