Part 24 (2/2)

The old ones, palsied, blear, and h.o.a.r, Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s in anguish beat - They've seen him seventy times before, How well they know the cheat!

They've seen that ghastly pantomime, They've felt its blighting breath, They know that rollicking Christmas-time Meant Cold and Want and Death, -

Starvation--Poor Law Union fare - And deadly cramps and chills, And illness--illness everywhere, And crime, and Christmas bills.

They know Old Christmas well, I ween, Those men of ripened age; They've often, often, often seen That Actor off the stage!

They see in his gay rotundity A clumsy stuffed-out dress - They see in the cup he waves on high A tinselled emptiness.

Those aged men so lean and wan, They've seen it all before, They know they'll see the charlatan But twice or three times more.

And so they bear with dance and song, And crimson foil and green, They wearily sit, and grimly long For the Transformation Scene.

Ballad: HAUNTED.

Haunted? Ay, in a social way By a body of ghosts in dread array; But no conventional spectres they - Appalling, grim, and tricky: I quail at mine as I'd never quail At a fine traditional spectre pale, With a turnip head and a ghostly wail, And a splash of blood on the d.i.c.key!

Mine are horrible, social ghosts, - Speeches and women and guests and hosts, Weddings and morning calls and toasts, In every bad variety: Ghosts who hover about the grave Of all that's manly, free, and brave: You'll find their names on the architrave Of that charnel-house, Society.

Black Monday--black as its school-room ink - With its dismal boys that snivel and think Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink, And its frozen tank to wash in.

That was the first that brought me grief, And made me weep, till I sought relief In an emblematical handkerchief, To choke such baby bosh in.

First and worst in the grim array- Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way, Which I wouldn't revive for a single day For all the wealth of PLUTUS - Are the horrible ghosts that school-days scared: If the cla.s.sical ghost that BRUTUS dared Was the ghost of his ”Caesar” unprepared, I'm sure I pity BRUTUS.

I pa.s.s to critical seventeen; The ghost of that terrible wedding scene, When an elderly Colonel stole my Queen, And woke my dream of heaven.

No schoolgirl decked in her nurse-room curls Was my gus.h.i.+ng innocent Queen of Pearls; If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls, She was one of forty-seven!

I see the ghost of my first cigar, Of the thence-arising family jar - Of my maiden brief (I was at the Bar, And I called the Judge ”Your wushup!”) Of reckless days and reckless nights, With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights, Unholy songs and tipsy fights, Which I strove in vain to hush up.

Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks, Ghosts of ”copy, declined with thanks,”

Of novels returned in endless ranks, And thousands more, I suffer.

The only line to fitly grace My humble tomb, when I've run my race, Is, ”Reader, this is the resting-place Of an unsuccessful duffer.”

I've fought them all, these ghosts of mine, But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine, And now that I'm nearly forty-nine, Old age is my chiefest bogy; For my hair is thinning away at the crown, And the silver fights with the worn-out brown; And a general verdict sets me down As an irreclaimable fogy.

Footnotes:

{1} A version of this ballad is published as a Song, by Mr.

Jeffreys, Soho Square.

{2} This ballad is published as a Song, under the t.i.tle ”If,” by Messrs. Cramer and Co.

{3} ”Go with me to a Notary--seal me there Your single bond.”--Merchant of Venice, Act I., sc. 3.

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