HE poets who write in the magazines
Have pitched their tents amid sylvan scenes;
Treading with joy in their lazy lay
The primrose path of the woodland way,
They always stop on the road to sing
Of “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”
I know that breeze of the lilting line—
That breeze is a very old friend of mine;
That it takes bards in, need cause no surprise—
For at throwing dust into people’s eyes,
Facile princeps and also king
Is “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”
It’s the “poet” that’s balmy, and not the breeze,
When he sings in praise of our English “bise,”
The wind that blows ’neath the cold gray sky,
That stabs the chest and inflames the eye;
It is death that hovers with sable wing
On “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”
I’d sing the song that this breeze deserves,
But, alas! I’ve “liver” and also “nerves;”
Sciatica racks me day and night,
And I haven’t a bronchial tube that’s right;
And the fiend that all these woes doth bring
Is “the balmy breeze of awakening Spring.”
Ballad of Old-Time Fogs.
HE sky above my head is fair—
Not dark, as once it used to be—
And joy and life are in the air,
And green is every budding tree
That, wind-swept, makes its bough to me;
And all the world is glad and gay,
Which makes me cry when this I see—
“Where are the fogs of yesterday?”
My heart is light and void of care—
Though this year’s months are yet but three—
I miss the mid-day gas-lamps’ glare,
I meet the folks who used to flee
To Southern France and Italy;
In London now they gladly stay,
In London spend their £ s. d.—
Where are the fogs of yesterday?
One shirt till eve I now can wear,
Which once was quite a rarity,
And even folks in Bedford Square
And erstwhile blackest Bloomsbury,
Can from their windows gaze with glee
And nod to friends across the way,
And Auguste says to Stephen G.,
“Where are the fogs of yesterday?”
Prince, since of them at last we’re free,
And London ’scapes their cruel sway,
Why need we care a single D?
Where are the fogs of yesterday?