No stein shall greet my straining eyes,
No matter how they blink,
Mine ears shall never hear again
The highball glasses clink,—
There is not anywhere a jug
To cuddle with my wrist,—
But my habituated foot
Remains an optimist!
It lifts itself, it curls itself,
It feels the empty air,
It seeks a long brass railing,
And the railing isn't there!
I do not seek for sympathy
For stomach nor for throat,
I never liked my liver much—
'T is such a sulky goat!—
I do not seek your pity for
My writhen tongue and wried,
I do not ask your tears because
My lips are shrunk and dried,—
But, oh! my foot! My cheated foot!
My foot that lives in hope!
It is a piteous sight to see
It lift itself and grope!
I look at it, I talk to it,
I lesson it and plead,
But with a humble cheerfulness,
That makes my heart to bleed,
It lifts itself, it curls itself,
It searches through the air,
It seeks a long brass railing,
And the railing isn't there!
I carried it to church one day—
O foot so fond and frail!
I had to drag it forth in haste:
It grabbed the chancel rail.
My heart is all resigned and calm,
So, likewise, is my soul,
But my habituated foot
Is quite beyond control!
An escalator on the Ell
Began its upward trip,
My foot reached up and clutched the rail
And crushed it in its grip.
It grabs the headboard of my bed
With such determined clasp
That I'm compelled to scald the thing
To make it loose its grasp.
Sometimes it leaps to clutch the curb
When I walk down the street—
Oh, how I suffer for the hope
That lives within my feet!
Myself, I can endure the drouth
With stoic calm, and prayer—
But my feet still seek a railing
When a railing isn't there.
XIV—ONCE YOUTH WAS MINE
To Frank Stanton
Once the wild raptures and the beating wings
Of Song were mine, the sun, the climbing flight;
The wind's great fellowship upon the height. . . .
Once Youth was mine, and the young heart that
sings!
But now the little things, the trivial things,
Beat down my spirit with their leagued might . . .
Could I, within some friendly Dive to-night,
Meet the Old Gang, 'twould make me young, by
jings!
As the mad lark rises, drunk with joy and sun,
When morning bends above the dewy meadow,
And his clear call proclaims: “The day is won!”
Over a hurried rout of driven shadow,
So should I rise and sing, had I a Bun.
O would that we were soused together, Kiddo!