TO JAMES IN THE BATH.
Without the bolted door at muse I stand,
My restive sponge and towel in my hand.
Thus to await you, Jimmy, is not strange,
But as I wait I mark a woeful change.
Time was when wrathfully I should have heard
Loud jubilation mock my hope deferred;
For who, first in the bathroom, fit and young,
Would, as he washed, refrain from giving tongue,
Nor chant his challenge from the soapy deep,
Inspired by triumph and renewed by sleep?
Then how is this? Here have I waited long,
Yet heard no crash of surf, no snatch of song.
James, I am sad, forgetting to be cold;
Does this decorum mean that we grow old?
I knew you, James, as clamorous in your bath
As porpoises that thresh the ocean-path;
Oh! as you bathed when we were happy boys,
You drowned the taps with inharmonious noise;
Above the turmoil of the lathered wave
How you would bellow ditties of the brave!
How, wilder that the sea-mew, through the foam
Whistle shrill strains that agonised your home.
In the brimmed bath you revelled; all the floor
Was swamped with spindrift; underneath the door
The maddened water gushed, while strong and high
Your piercing top-note staggered passers-by.
But now I hear the running taps alone,
A faint and melancholy monotone;
Or just a gentle swirl when sober hope
Searches the bath's profound to salve the soap.
Sadly I kick the unresponsive door;
Youth, with its blithe ablutions, is no more.
W.K.H.