Right Royal | Page 5

cabs from the railway stations,?Carrying men from all the nations,?Olive-skinned French with clipped moustaches,?Almond-eyed like Paris apaches.?Rosy French with their faces shining?From joy of living and love of dining.?Silent Spaniards, merry Italians,?Nobles, commoners, saints, rapscallions;?Russians tense with the quest of truth?That maddens manhood and saddens youth;?Learned Norwegians hale and limber,?Brown from the barques new in with timber.?Oregon men of six feet seven?With backs from Atlas and hearts from Heaven.?Orleans Creoles, ready for duels,?Their delicate ears with scarlet jewels,?Green silk handkerchiefs round their throats,?In from sea with the cotton boats.?Portuguese and Brazilianos,?Men from the mountains, men from the Llanos,?Men from the Pampas, men from the Sierras,?Men from the mines of the Cordilleras,?Men from the flats of the tropic mud?Where the butterfly glints his mail with blood;?Men from the pass where day by day?The sun's heat scales the rocks away;?Men from the hills where night by night?The sheep-bells give the heart delight;?Indians, Lascars and Bengalese.?Greeks from the mainland, Greeks from the seas;?All kinds of bodies, all kinds of faces,?All were coming to see the races,?Coming to see Sir Lopez run?And watch the English having their fun.
The Carib boxer from Hispaniola?Wore a rose in his tilted bowler;?He drove a car with a yellow panel,?He went full speed and he drove a channel.
Then came dog-carts and traps and wagons?With hampers of lunches, pies and flagons,?Bucks from city and flash young bloods?With vests "cut saucy" to show their studs,?Hawbuck Towler and Spicey Random?Tooled in style in a rakish tandem.?Blood Dick Haggit and Bertie Askins?Had dancers' skirts on their horses' gaskins;?Crash Pete Snounce with that girl of Dowser's?Drove a horse that was wearing trousers;?The waggonette from The Old Pier Head?Drove to the tune "My Monkey's Dead."
The costermongers as smart as sparrows?Brought their wives in their donkey barrows.?The clean-legged donkeys, clever and cunning,?Their ears cocked forward, their neat feet running,?Their carts and harness flapping with flags,?Were bright as heralds and proud as stags.?And there in pride in the flapping banners?Were the costers' selves in blue bandannas,?And the costers' wives in feathers curling,?And their sons, with their sweet mouth-organs skirling.
And from midst of the road to the roadside shifting?The crowd of the world on foot went drifting,?Standing aside on the trodden grass?To chaff as they let the traffic pass.?Then back they flooded, singing and cheering,?Plodding forward and disappearing,?Up to the course to take their places,?To lunch and gamble and see the races.
The great grand stand, made grey by the weather,?Flaunted colours that tugged their tether;?Tier upon tier the wooden seats?Were packed as full as the London streets?When the King and Queen go by in state.
Click click clack went the turnstile gate;?The orange-sellers cried "Fat and fine?Seville oranges, sweet, like wine:?Twopence apiece, all juice, all juice."?The pea and the thimble caught their goose.
Two white-faced lurchers, not over-clean,?Urged the passers to "spot the Queen."?They flicked three cards that the world might choose,?They cried "All prizes. You cannot lose.?Come, pick the lady. Only a shilling."?One of their friends cried out, "I'm willing."?He "picked the lady" and took his pay,?And he cried, "It's giving money away."
Men came yelling "Cards of the races";?Men hawked matches and studs and laces;?Gipsy-women in green shawls dizened?Read girls' fortunes with eyes that glistened;?Negro minstrels on banjos strumming?Sang at the stiles to people coming.
Like glistening beetles clustered close,?The myriad motors parked in rows,?The bonnets flashed, and the brass did clink,?As the drivers poured their motors drink.
The March wind blew the smell of the crowd,?All men there seemed crying aloud,?But over the noise a louder roar?Broke, as the wave that bursts on shore,?Drowns the roar of the wave that comes,?So this roar rose on the lesser hums,?"I back the field. I back the field."
Man who lives under sentence sealed,?Tragical man, who has but breath?For few brief years as he goes to death,?Tragical man by strange winds blown?To live in crowds ere he die alone,?Came in his jovial thousands massing,?To see Life moving and Beauty passing.
They sucked their fruit in the wooden tiers?And flung the skins at the passers' ears;?Drumming their heels on the planks below,?They sang of Dolly of Idaho.?Past, like a flash, the first race went.?The time drew by to the great event.
At a quarter to three the big bell pealed;?The horses trooped to the Saddling Field.?Covered in clothing, horse and mare?Pricked their ears at the people there;?Some showed devil, and some, composure,?As they trod their way to the great enclosure.
When the clock struck three and the men weighed out,?Charles Cothill shook, though his heart was stout.?The thought of his bets, so gaily laid,?Seemed a stone the more when he sat and weighed.
As he swung in the scales and nursed his saddle,?It seemed to him that his brains would addle;?For now that the plunger reached the brink,?The risk was more than he liked to think.
In ten more minutes his future life,?His hopes of home with his chosen wife,?Would