Читать книгу Familiar Faces - Graham Harry - Страница 4

In many a boudoir nowadays

The baritone's decolleté throat

Produces weird unearthly lays,

Like some dyspeptic goat

Deprived but lately of her young

(But not, alas! of either lung).

His low-necked collar fails to show

The contours of his manly chest,

Since that has fallen far below

His "fancy evening vest."

Here, too, in picturesque relief,

Nestles his crimson handkerchief.

Will no one tell me why he sings

Such doleful melancholy lays,

Of withered summers, ruined springs,

Of happier bygone days,

And kindred topics, more or less

Designed to harass or depress?

That ballad in his bloated hand

Is of the old familiar blend: —

A faded flow'r, a maiden, and

A "brave kiss" at the end!

(The kind of kiss that, for a bet,

A man might give a Suffragette.)

Eyes that looked down into mine,

With a longing that seemed to say

Is it too late, dear heart, to wait

For the dawn of a brighter day?

Is it too late to laugh at fate?

See how the teardrops start!

Can we not weather the tempest together,

Dear Heart, Dear Heart?

Lips that I pressed to my own,

As I gazed at her yielding form, —

Turned with a groan, and then hastened alone

Into the teeth of the Storm!

Long, long ago! Still the winds blow!

Far have we drifted apart!

You live with Mother, and I love – another!

Dear Heart, Dear Heart!

At times some drinking-song inspires

Our hero to a vocal burst,

Until his audience, too, acquires

The most prodigious thirst.

And nobody would ever think

That milk was his peculiar drink!

What spacious days his song recalls,

When each monastic brotherhood

Could brew, within its private walls,

A vintage just as good

As that which restaurants purvey

As "rare old Tawny Port" to-day!

The Abbot he sits, as his rank befits,

With a bottle at either knee,

And he smacks his lips as he slowly sips

At his beaker of Malvoisie.

Sing Ho! Ho! Ho!

Let the red wine flow!

Let the sack flow fast and free!

His heart it grows merry on negus and sherry,

And never a care has he!

Ho! Ho!

(Ora pro nobis!)

Sing Ho! for the Malvoisie!

In cellar cool, on a highbacked stool,

The Friar he sits him down,

With the door tight shut, and an unbroached butt

Where the ale flows clear and brown.

Sing Ha! Sing Hi!

Till the cask runs dry,

His spirits shall never fail!

For no one is dryer than Francis the Friar,

When getting "outside the pail!"

Ho! Ho!

(Benedicimus!)

Sing Ho! for the nutbrown ale!

The Monk sits there, in his cell so bare,

And he lowers his tonsured head,

As he lifts the lid of the tankard hid

'Neath the straw of his trestle bed.

Sing Ho! Sink Hey!

From the break of day

Till the vesper-bell rings clear,

Of grave he makes merry and hastens to bury

His cares in the butt'rybier!

Ho! Ho!

(Pax Omnibuscum!)

Sing Ho! for the buttery beer!

Oh, find me some secure retreat,

Some Paradise for stricken souls,

Where amateurs no longer bleat

Their feeble baracoles,

From lungs that are so oddly placed

Where other people keep their waist;

Where public taste has quite outgrown

The faculty for being bored

By each anæmic baritone

Who murders "The Lost Chord,"

And singers, as a body, are

Cursed with a permanent catarrh!