Butterflies carmine-and-white
Flicker and flutter for you
Into the town and its light,
Out of the gloom of the night,
Butterflies carmine-and white
Flutter and flicker for you.
BALLADE OF ANGRY GALLERY FIRST-NIGHTERS
I WONDER in what quiet zone,
The Shades on high are not irate,
What Thespian temple, brick or stone,
Shrines Jupiters who will not slate
Pale authors still importunate,
And timid actors blenching grey
Beneath their grease-paints roseate—
Where are the gods of yesterday?
Where’s “Bravo, Hicks!” who held his own,
Sans hoot or shout or wild debate,
Declaiming in full, mellow tone
Heroic lines on virtue’s state?
Where’s comic Robson, Little-Great
(Great Little spoils the rhyme’s array),
Who ne’er incurred the High God’s hate?—
Sped with the gods of yesterday.
Where’s Poet Bunn, who roused no moan.
Or dreadful booh expostulate
By lyrics arduously thrown
To give an o’er-light opera weight?
Where does our Dion hibernate—
The Boucicault of once-a-day,
Master of his Hibernian fate?—
Gone with his gods of yesterday.
L’Envoi
LET’S candidly commiserate
Playwrights and players turned to bay.
Let’s also freely objurgate
The gods who rule our latter day.
THE DIGGER
I DIG a grave from hour to hour,
A little house of dole and death,
A gruesome court, a ghastly bower,
For love that drew dishonoured breath.
I dig a grave from day to day,
Without a pang or any prayer,
Irreverently, clay to clay,
I lay my dead illusions there.