English

At Romford House the ball-room floor
Mirrored a hostess somewhat flustered;
The debutantes around the door
In mournful groups were clustered;
The band conversed in undertones,
Their leader shrugged a scornful shoulder,
The draught about the chaperones
Blew cold and ever colder;
The butler, on the stairs, grew pale,
He was, alas! the only male.

The rooms became as chill as vaults,
Devoid of all but female dancers;
In vain the bandsmen played a waltz,
A two-step and some Lancers.

Dinner was once a solemn meal;
Our fathers ate, straight off the reel,
Two soups, two fishes, entrees, roast,
A bird, sweets, savoury on toast,
Till from dessert at last they rose,
Well surfeited and comatose.

At such a feast we gaze askance,
To-day we only dine to dance.
The saxophone's melodious bleat,
The drummer's contrapuntal beat
Are mandates none may now ignore;
They bid us rise and take the floor!
But ere we spring from table, so,
To tread, on light fantastic toe,

To entertain one's friends at lunch —
Singly or in a solid bunch —
This is indeed a daily joy,
A pastime that can never cloy!

The restaurant that you select,
If you would win the world's respect,
Must be some centre of renown,
The most expensive place in town,
Where guests, in admiration lost,
Delight to think how much they cost,
And he is deemed the nicest host
Who manages to spend the most.

My brother Fritz, one summer's day,
Was lunching with his fiancee ,

On the question of behaviour when At Table
There is much that proves perplexing to the mind;
Should we eat, that is, as much as we are able?
Should we drink as much as Nature feels inclined?
Is it right to use a spoon to swallow curry?
Is it wrong to use a knife for eating cheese?
There is scope for much embarrassment and worry
In such knotty points as these.

Of the business of eating and of drinking —

Here where the grey rhenoster clothes the hill,
Drowsing beside a boulder in the sun,
Slumbrous-inert, so gloomy and so still,
On the warm steep where aimless sheeppaths run,
A short thick length of chevron-pattern'd skin,
A wide flat head so lazy on the sand,
Unblinking eyes that warn of power within,
Lies he, — the limbless terror of the land.

He is the ablest specialist in death, —
This gleam of living velvet — and in this
He finds his pride; yet, with presaging breath,
He warns the unwary footstep with a hiss.

Welcome, ah! welcome, life's last friend, decay!
Faint on, tir'd soul and lapse, unmourn'd , away;
Now, I look back, asham'd, at hope's false blaze,
That shone, delightful, on my happier days;
In their true colours, now, too late, I see,
What youth, and pride, and mirth, and praise, must be!
Bring, then, great curer , death, thy dark relief,
And save me, from vain sense of hopeless grief.
Shut me for ever from the suffering scene,
And leave long voids for silent rest between.
Thy hand can snatch me from a weeping son ,

Blended by fading moonlight with the grass —
The long brown grass that bends beneath the dew —
Supple, subtle, and silent: eyes of brass
That rove in solemn fierceness o'er the view;
Seeking his living by the shadow'd walks
Of sleeping man: Ingwi the Leopard stalks.

Thing from the utter silence of the wild —
Thing from the outer darkness of the night —
Father of terror, of grey fear the child
Ingwi, (in peace softer than silk; in fight
Harder than steel,) cringing in fear draws nigh

When Rakes become reformers, masquerade
Must be allowed a most extensive trade:
You call the world a stage—you find it so,
And well, to play, behind the curtain , know:
Mean while, your partners, on the far-fam'd strait ,
Act hero's sillier parts, and serve the state :
Fond of a safer toil , you change the scene ,
And, not in fields of war , but wit , grow lean:
How blest your fortune , in the king's warm pay ,
That lets your muse her own expence defray!
Merit , like yours, unprosp'rous else, might strive,

I feel a change, — and yet I know not how
Or where or when, or what it doth betoken;
But sure I am that voices which have spoken
Daily within my soul are speechless now.
For thought or fancy, hope, joy, smile and tear,
My being is not what it was last year.
And a new power, which will not yet reveal
Its name and purpose, hath already gone
This way or that, as though it fain would steal
And climb unchallenged to some inward throne:
While I with fretful guess go sounding on
Depth after depth of my vexed mind, to dodge

Our thoughts are greater than ourselves, our dreams
Ofttimes more solid than our acts; our hope
With more of substance and of shadow teems
Than our thin joys, and hath a nobler scope.
O sons of men! there is a Presence here,
Here in our own undying spirits, which
With an unearthly wealth doth oft enrich
The reason hourly sanctified by fear.
Herewith men prophesy, herewith men press
To their own hearts in studious loneliness
Forms greater than they dare to tell: beneath
The shadow of their own imaginings