NOMINE TANTUM.
This morn, as now for half a score of years,
I comfortably caught the nine-fifteen;
At noon we met by chance—as noontide nears
Such the weeks round our daily chance has been;
Yet shipwrecked brother, newly come to land,
Could not more fiercely seize me by the hand.
You ask me how I am, nor let it pass,
But keep on asking till I tell you how;
'Twere rude to bid you not to be an ass,
Churlish to turn a greeting to a row;
But, knowing that my general health is fair,
Why should you daily ask, why should you care?
I sometimes wonder, while my knuckles ache
With unrequited pressure of your digits,
While whispered mysteries of nought you make,
And take no notice of my patent fidgets—
I wonder how a real old friend you'd flatter,
And how reveal a really private matter.
Think but a moment, (if you ever think,)
I never knead your knuckles with my thumb,
I never proffer an untimely drink,
About my own affairs I'm ever dumb,
Yet I believe, in your impulsive way,
You think we're bosom friends from childhood's day.
Yes, though they brand our English ways as cold,
Meetings like ours make glad the whole huge city.
The magnate, weighty as though shod with gold,
The lawyer's clerk, precocious, slim and writty,
All have the same convulsive warmth of greeting
For casual people whom they're always meeting.
Is it perchance self-preservation's law
That drives good will, drowning in Mammon's sea,
To clutch in frenzy at a man of straw,
And cheer a heart with the hand's amity,
That in the way of business would stab it—
Or is it only an absurd bad habit?