"It has been a charming month in Bohemia," Percy continued. "I have thoroughly enjoyed it—it is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. I have had my fill of conventional society, and I have drained the cup of reckless pleasures; but this charming mixture of refinement, esprit and abandon, has been a new element to me."
"Apropos to your reference to a month in Bohemia," said Dolores, "I believe Mr. Orton has written a poem on Bohemia, which he has kindly promised to deliver this evening. Mr. Orton, will you favor us now?"
"I was not aware that you were a poet, Mr. Orton," Percy remarked, as the young man arose, and began to affect the bashful-school-girl air.
"Sir," said the journalist, turning a stern look upon Percy, and speaking in a sepulchral tone, "I am all that is bad: a newspaper man, a poet, and—" pointing toward the piano, "the worst remains to be told; I am a pianist." And then, quickly changing his expression and voice, he recited in the most admirable manner the following verses:
BOHEMIA
Bohemia, o'er thy unatlassed borders
How many cross, with half-reluctant feet,
And unformed fears of dangers and disorders.
To find delights, more wholesome and more sweet
Than ever yet were known to the "elite."
Herein can dwell no pretence and no seeming;
No stilted pride thrives in this atmosphere,
Which stimulates a tendency to dreaming.
The shores of the ideal world, from here,
Seem sometimes to be tangible and near.
We have no use for formal codes of fashion;
No "Etiquette of Courts" we emulate;
We know it needs sincerity and passion
To carry out the plans of God, or fate;
We do not strive to seem inanimate.
We call no time lost that we give to pleasure;
Life's hurrying river speeds to Death's great sea;
We cast out no vain plummet-line to measure
Imagined depths of that unknown To Be,
But grasp the Now, and fill it full of glee.
All creeds have room here, and we all together
Devoutly worship at Art's sacred shrine;
But he who dwells once in thy golden weather,
Bohemia—sweet, lovely land of mine—
Can find no joy outside thy border-line.