Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke
Charles Stuart Calverley (18311884)Gemini and Virgo
S
Ere all my youth had vanish’d from me,
A boy it was my lot to know,
Whom his familiar friends called Tommy.
A young bud bursting into blossom;
Artless, as Eve yet unbeguiled,
And agile as a young opossum:
Yet mad, at moments, as a hatter:
Why hatters as a race are mad
I never knew, nor does it matter.
One of those small misguided creatures,
Who, tho’ their intellects are dim,
Are one too many for their teachers.
What twice 10 was, or 3 times 7,
He’d glance (in quite a placid way)
From heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
To catch a casual suggestion;
But make no effort to propound
Any solution of the question.
Of the authorities: and therefore
He fraternized by chance with me,
Needing a somebody to care for:
Live (as they say) and love together;
And bore by turns the wholesome cane
Till our young skins became as leather:
And tore our clothes, and inked our collars;
And looked unique and picturesque,
But not, it may be, model scholars.
We’d never heard of Mrs. Grundy;
All the theology we knew
Was that we mightn’t play on Sunday;
Were to be bought at four a penny,
And that excruciating aches
Resulted if we ate too many;
And wisdom consequently folly,
The obvious result is this—
That our two lives were very jolly.
Real love, at that time, was the fashion;
And by a horrid chance, the same
Young thing was, to us both, a passion.
His feet were large, his hands were pimply,
His manner, when excited, coarse:—
But Miss P. was an angel simply.
All—more than all—my fancy painted;
Once—when she helped me to a wing
Of goose—I thought I should have fainted.
But I was green, and loved her dearly.
She was approaching thirty-two;
And I was then eleven, nearly.
(None ever did that I’ve heard tell of;)
My passion was a byword through
The town she was, of course, the belle of.
The far-off sound of rippling river;
As to cadets in Hindostan
The fleeting remnant of their liver—
That fills the miser’s sunless coffers;
As to the spinster, growing old,
The thought—the dream—that she had offers.
I’d written lines to her as Venus;
I’d sworn unflinchingly to shoot
The man who dared to come between us:
The friend in whom my soul confided,
Who dared to gaze on her—to do,
I may say, much the same as I did.
There was no doubt about the matter;
I said he must resign, or stand
My vengeance—and he chose the latter.
We fought as long as we were able:
My rival had a bottle-nose,
And both my speaking eyes were sable.
Miss P. gave both of us a plaster;
And in a week became the wife
Of Horace Nibbs, the writing-master.
I loved her then—I’d love her still,
Only one must not love Another’s:
But thou and I, my Tommy, will,
When we again meet, meet as brothers.
Peace only: that the blood is brisker
In boys’ veins, than in theirs whose cheeks
Are partially obscured by whisker;
The memories of past wrongs from us.
But this is certain—that I feel
Most friendly unto thee, oh Thomas!
On this or that side the Equator,
If I’ve not turned teetotaller then,
And have wherewith to pay the waiter,
Ignite with thee the mild Havannah;
And we will waft, while liquoring up,
Forgiveness to the heartless A