Читать книгу Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 15

Who now remembers Almack’s balls —

   Willis’s sometime named —

In those two smooth-floored upper halls

   For faded ones so famed?

Where as we trod to trilling sound

The fancied phantoms stood around,

   Or joined us in the maze,

Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years,

Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers,

   The fairest of former days.

Who now remembers gay Cremorne,

   And all its jaunty jills,

And those wild whirling figures born

   Of Jullien’s grand quadrilles?

With hats on head and morning coats

There footed to his prancing notes

   Our partner-girls and we;

And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked,

And the platform throbbed as with arms enlinked

   We moved to the minstrelsy.

Who now recalls those crowded rooms

   Of old yclept “The Argyle,”

Where to the deep Drum-polka’s booms

   We hopped in standard style?

Whither have danced those damsels now!

Is Death the partner who doth moue