I DANCED at your ball a year ago,
To-night I pay for your bread and cheese,
“And a glass of bitters, if you please,
For you drank my best champagne, you know!”
Madcap ever, you laugh the while,
As you drink your bitters and munch your bread;
The face is the same, and the same old smile
Came up at a word I said.
A year ago I danced at your ball,
I sit by your side in the bar to-night;
And the luck has changed, you say: that’s all!
And the luck will change, you say: all right!
For the men go by, and the rent’s to pay,
And you haven’t a friend in the world to-day;
And the money comes and the money goes:
And to-night, who cares? and to-morrow, who knows?
AT THE LYCEUM.
HER eyes are brands that keep the angry heat
Of fire that crawls and leaves an ashen path.
The dust of this devouring flame she hath
Upon her cheeks and eyelids. Fresh and sweet
In days that were, her sultry beauty now
Is pain transfigured, love’s impenitence,
The memory of a maiden innocence,
As a crown set upon a weary brow.
She sits, and fain would listen, fain forget;
She smiles, but with those tragic, waiting eyes,
Those proud and piteous lips that hunger yet
For love’s fulfilment. Ah, when Landry cries
“My heart is dead!” with what a wild regret
Her own heart feels the throb that never dies!
THE BLIND BEGGAR.
HE stands, a patient figure, where the crowd
Heaves to and fro beside him. In his ears
All day the Fair goes thundering, and he hears
In darkness, as a dead man in his shroud.
Patient he stands, with age and sorrow bowed,
And holds a piteous hat of ancient yean;
And in his face and gesture there appears
The desperate humbleness of poor men proud.
What thoughts are his, as, with the inward sight,
He sees those mirthful faces pass him by?
Is the long darkness darker for that light.
The misery deeper when that joy is nigh?
Patient, alone, he stands from morn to night,
Pleading in his reproachful misery.