LONDON PSEUDO-SONNETS.
Some of these verses have appeared in The Saturday Review, The Spectator, The Westminster Gazette, and are republished by the courtesy of the editors of these journals.
THE OLD CLOTHES DEALER.
IT’S not my fault, now is it? I’m a Jew.
I’d a been born a Christian quick enough
If only so I could have sold my stuff
Double the price, and not be called a screw.
There’s half-day Saturday at Synagogue,
And when Atonement comes a whole day lost.
O, I don’t grumble; still one counts the cost
When on the top I’m treated like a dog.
And, though a Jew should’nt by rights complain
Bein’ the chosen, can’t a man have dreams?
Clothes’ dealing’s not the desert, still it seems
We all of us are wandering again.
I often think when the Shemah begins
“O God o’ Jacob ain’t we paid our sins?”
COVES AT HAMPTON COURT.
YOU go by motor-bus from Hammersmith
And come back loud and cheerful after dark
Adorned with twigs you’ve plucked in Bushey Park,
Eating the sandwiches you started with.
And you don’t care, why should you? when you’re brought
Into the grimy streets out of the green,
That, if you’d had the luck, you might have been
The sort of cove who lives at Hampton Court.
You’ve got the murders and the betting news,
And slums to bake in and the picture shows.
Why should you care if somewhere a red rose
Burns all night through, and the great avenues
Are lit as though with candles. What’s the odds?
London’s for you; the summer’s for the gods.
ONE MAN RETURNS.
HE wanted me to tear me ’ands to bits
Along o’ the box-makers, ’stead of which
I took and bought a basket, struck a pitch
To sell me flowers by the Hotel Ritz.
I like ’is cheek. It isn’t ’im wot sits
Working in darkness till your fingers itch
And ’arf your side is broken with a stitch—
’Im swanking in ’is blessed epaulittes!
Nor I don’t care, not what you might say care
If ’e’s gone orf. Not that I’d reely mind
If, ’earing that I’d got a bit to spare,
He come back sudden. I should act refined,
Pin ’im ’is flower in with me ’and quite steady
And then say proud-like, “Why if it ain’t Freddy.”