Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch

Project Gutenberg's The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch, by R.
C. Lehmann
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch
Author: R. C. Lehmann
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8433]
[Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on July 9, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

VAGABOND AND OTHER POEMS ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon,
Charles Bidwell
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE VAGABOND AND OTHER POEMS
FROM PUNCH
BY R. C. LEHMANN
Author of "ANNI FUGACES", "CRUMBS OF PITY", and "LIGHT
AND SHADE"
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK:
JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVIII
Printed in Great Britain by Tumbull & Spears, Edinburgh
NOTE
All but two of the pieces here printed appeared originally in
Punch. My thanks are due to Messrs Bradbury, Agnew & Co., the
Proprietors of Punch, for permitting me to reprint them here. "For
Wilma" was first published in Blackwood's Magazine, and appears here
by the courtesy of the Editor.
R. C. L.
CONTENTS
THE VAGABOND
SINGING WATER
FOR WILMA

CRAGWELL END
THE BIRD IN THE ROOM
KILLED IN
ACTION
EPITAPH
TO FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT ROBINSON,
V.C.
PAGAN FANCIES
ROBIN, THE SEA-BOY
THE
BIRTHDAY
THE DANCE
PANSIES
THE DRAGON OF
WINTER HILL
FLUFFY, A CAT
THE LEAN-TO SHED

THE CONTRACT
JOHN
THE SPARROW
GELERT
AVE,
CAESAR!
SOO-TI
THE BATH
PETER, A PEKINESE
PUPPY
THE DOGS' WELCOME
ODE TO JOHN
BRADBURY
TEETH-SETTING
THE DEATH OF EUCLID



TO POSTUMUS IN OCTOBER
A RAMSHACKLE ROOM

THE LAST STRAW
THE OLD GREY MARE
AT PUTNEY

"A LITTLE BIT OF BLUE"
THE LAST COCK-PHEASANT

IN MEMORIAM
THE VAGABOND
It was deadly cold in Danbury town
One terrible night in mid
November,
A night that the Danbury folk remember
For the sleety
wind that hammered them down,
That chilled their faces and chapped
their skin,
And froze their fingers and bit their feet,
And made them
ice to the heart within,
And spattered and scattered
And shattered and battered
Their
shivering bodies about the street;
And the fact is most of them didn't
roam
In the face of the storm, but stayed at home;
While here and
there a policeman, stamping
To keep himself warm or sedately
tramping
Hither and thither, paced his beat;
Or peered where out of
the blizzard's welter
Some wretched being had crept to shelter,
And
now, drenched through by the sleet, a muddled
Blur of a man and his
rags, lay huddled.
But one there was who didn't care,
Whatever the furious storm might
dare,
A wonderful, hook-nosed bright-eyed fellow
In a thin brown
cape and a cap of yellow
That perched on his dripping coal-black hair.

A red scarf set off his throat and bound him,
Crossing his breast,
and, winding round him,
Flapped at his flank
In a red streak dank;
And his hose were red,
with a purple sheen
From his tunic's blue, and his shoes were green.

He was most outlandishly patched together
With ribbons of silk
and tags of leather,
And chains of silver and buttons of stone,
And
knobs of amber and polished bone,

And a turquoise brooch and a
collar of jade,
And a belt and a pouch of rich brocade,
And a

gleaming dagger with inlaid blade
And jewelled handle of burnished
gold
Rakishly stuck in the red scarf's fold--
A dress, in short, that
might suit a wizard
On a calm warm day
In the month of May,
But was hardly fit for an
autumn blizzard.
Whence had he come there? Who could say,
As he swung through
Danbury town that day,
With a friendly light in his deep-set eyes,

And his free wild gait and his upright bearing,
And his air that
nothing could well surprise,
So bright it was and so bold and daring?

He might have troubled the slothful ease
Of the Great Mogul in a
warlike fever;
He might have bled for the Maccabees,
Or risen, spurred
By the Prophet's word,
And swooped on the hosts
of the unbeliever.
Whatever his birth and his nomenclature,
Something he seemed to
have, some knowledge
That never was taught at school or college,

But was part of his very being's nature:
Some ingrained lore that
wanderers show
As over the earth they come and go,
Though they
hardly know what it is they know.
And so with his head upheld he walked,
And ever the rain drove
down;
And now and again to himself he talked
In the streets of
Danbury