YOUTH AND ART. 1. Ir once might have been, once only: You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely, 2. Your trade was with sticks and clay, You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished, Then laughed, "They will see some day Smith made, and Gibson demolished." 3. My business was song, song, song; I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered, "Kate Brown's on the boards erelong, And Grisi's existence embittered!" 4. I earned no more by a warble I needed a music-master. 5. We studied hard in our styles, Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos, For air, looked out on the tiles, For fun, watched each other's windows. 6. You lounged, like a boy of the South, Or you got it, rubbing your mouth With fingers the clay adhered to. 7. And I soon managed to find Weak points in the flower-fence facing, Was forced to put up a blind And be safe in my corset-lacing. 8. No harm! It was not my fault If you never turned your eyes' tail up, As I shook upon E in alt., Or ran the chromatic scale up : 9. For spring bade the sparrows pair, And stalls in our street looked rare With bulrush and watercresses. 10. Why did not you pinch a flower Of thanks in a look, or sing it? 11. I did look, sharp as a lynx, (And yet the memory rankles,) When models arrived, some minx Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles. 12. But I think I gave you as good! "That foreign fellow, who can know How she pays, in a playful mood, For his tuning her that piano?" 13. Could you say so, and never say, "Suppose we join hands and fortunes, And I fetch her from over the way, Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes ?" 14. No, no: you would not be rash, Nor I rasher and something over: You've to settle yet Gibson's hash, And Grisi yet lives in clover. 15. But you meet the Prince at the Board, I'm queen myself at bals-paré, I've married a rich old lord, And you 're dubbed knight and an R. A. |