Lame Lady
A POOR lame lady limps along
Low sloping fields of tender green,
She’d love to break into a song
Or dance, a figure slim, serene.
All nature seems a parquet floor
To please the sense, to please the eye,
And Lazarus forgets each sore
Beneath the thickly-coated sky.
The poor lame lady senses whole
The shafts of coloured warmth arise,
A thirsty solitude of soul
Looms in her vague pathetic eyes.
The hollow spells of Spring are fleet
And quick thoughts clatter through her head....
“An awkward duck with webbèd feet!...
Ah! better far to lie a-bed.”
In bed her lameness will not leer,
For Sleep’s compassionate and kind,
And she will dance and sing and hear
The crooning of a phantom wind.
For then her body’s cage-doors wide
Are opened, and the spirit free
Flutters, and in a burst of pride
Dances before Eternity.
Conversations and Crumbling
“WELL, here we are. I venture to believe
We have not met since Venice ... seven years....
My sons were killed, and I was left to grieve
With Adelaide and Fanny ... they are dears.”
I look around and find two fleshy ears
Dangling a pair of ear-rings ... it’s a phase....
But all the same I wish that they’d wear stays.
When Regent Street is up I always feel
That London Bridge is also falling down,
Symbolic hulks of granite, orange peel,
And somebody who’s losing half-a-crown....
It is so queer, so queer, to live in town....
And then I see myself and purse my lips
“With no more conscience than a snake has hips.”[C]