ALL-A-BLOWING!
(A Cockney Pastoral in Spring time.)
Who-o-o-f! It's hot amost as Summer-time; yet what a blessed breeze
Is a-whiffing round the corners, and a-whoostling through the trees!
And the sunlight on the roof-slates, all aslant to the blue sky,
Seems to twinkle like the larfter in a pooty gurl's blue eye,
When you swing in the dance, and she feels you've got 'er step:
And the trees—ah! bless their branches!—through the winter weeks they've slep',
When the worrying winds would let 'em, all as black and mum as mutes,
A-waiting for the blackbirds, with their calls like meller flutes.
Just to whistle them awake like. Oh! but now they stir and rouse
Like a girl who has bin dreamin' of her lover in a drowse,
And wakes up to feel 'is kisses on 'er softly poutin' lips.
How they burst, all a-thirst for the April shower that drips
Tinkle-tink from leaf to leaf, washing every spraylet clean
From the sooty veil of London, which might dim the buddin' green
Of the pluckiest lime-tree, sproutin' o'er brown pales in a back-yard;
For these limes bud betimes, and they find it middlin' hard
To make way at windy corners, when the lamp as lights 'em through,
Like gold on green in pantomimes, is blown till it burns blue,
By the angry nor'east gusts. But the nor'east wind to-day
Is less like a rampin' lion than some new-born lamb at play.
Wy, the laylock's out aready, purple spires and creamy clumps.
Oh, that scent of shower-washed laylock! There's a somethin' in me jumps
As I ketch it round some corner, where the heart-shaped leaflets small
Cluster up against the stucco, as they did about that wall,
Grey, and gritty, and glass-spiked, of our tumble-down old cot
Out Epping way, in boy-time long ago, and quite a lot
Of remembrances came crowding, like good ghostes, in that scent;
There's the mother's call to dinner, there's the landlord's call—for rent!
And the call of the rooks,—and another call, fur off,
Like a whisper from a grave-yard, green and silent.
Some may scoff
At a Cockney's chat of laylocks. I could bury my old phiz
In their crisp and nutty coolness, as I did when flirty Liz,
My first sweetheart, sent me packing, one Spring mornin'—for a while—
And them blossoms cooled my anger—most as much as the arch smile
Which won me back to wooin'.
There's a blackbird on the top
Of yon tall, half bare acacia, pipes as if he'd never stop,
Tryin' all his tunelets over, like a sort of talking flute:—
"Chip-chip! Tsee-tsee! Chu-chu! Chu-rook!" goes the bird of sable suit.
"We-know-it! We-know-it! We-know-it! Bring-the-whip!—the whip!—the whip!
"Chu-rook-chu-chu! Chu-rook-chu-chu! Tsee-tsee-chu-chu-chip-chip!"
So he pours his pantin' heart out in a song half tune, half patter,
Like a meller music-haller of the tree-tops!
Ah—what matter
That 'tis only London's outskirts, that I'm a poor Cockney cove,
When this Wondrous Spring is on us? As my shallow on I shove,
And blare out my "All-a-blowing, All-a-growing!" down the streets,
There's a something fresh and shining-like in every face I meets!
Tis the Spring-love breaking through them! Wy, the very dirt looks clean
In the shimmer of the sunlight, and the shadow of the green.
All-a-blowing! All-a-growing! When I shout, I seem to sing,
For my cry takes on a music. It's the very Voice of Spring!
"MEAT FOR YOUR MASTER!"
"We shall only be Two to-night; Cook—your Master and Me—so all we shall want will be Soup and Fish and Lamb and Asparagus, with a Soufflé to follow, and a little Sweet-bread after the Fish, you know!"
"Yes, Ma'am. And for the Kitchen?"
"Oh—well—there's some of that Potted Ham still left we had for Breakfast yesterday. It's just on the turn, you know, so you may as well finish it Downstairs. It will do very well for your Dinner to-day, and To-morrow you shall each have an Egg!"