222 Dear Old London

WHEN I was broke in London in the fall of ’89,

I chanced to spy in Oxford Street this tantalizing sign,—

“A Splendid Horace cheap for Cash!” Of course I had to look

Upon the vaunted bargain, and it was a noble book!

A finer one I ’ve never seen, nor can I hope to see,—

The first edition, richly bound, and clean as clean can be;

And, just to think, for three-pounds-ten I might have had that Pine,

When I was broke in London in the fall of ’89!

Down at Noseda’s, in the Strand, I found, one fateful day,

A portrait that I pined for as only maniac may,—

A print of Madame Vestris (she flourished years ago,

Was Bartolozzi’s daughter, and a thoroughbred, you know).

A clean and handsome print it was, and cheap at thirty bob,—

That ’s what I told the salesman, as I choked a rising sob;

But I hung around Noseda’s as it were a holy shrine,

When I was broke in London in the fall of ’89.

At Davey’s, in Great Russell Street, were autographs galore,

And Mr. Davey used to let me con that precious store.

Sometimes I read what warriors wrote, sometimes a king’s command,

But oftener still a poet’s verse, writ in a meagre hand.

Lamb, Byron, Addison, and Burns, Pope, Johnson, Swift, and Scott,—

It needed but a paltry sum to comprehend the lot;

Yet, though Friend Davey marked ’em down, what could I but decline?

For I was broke in London in the fall of ’89.

Of antique swords and spears I saw a vast and dazzling heap

That Curio Fenton offered me at prices passing cheap;

And, oh, the quaint old bureaus, and the warming-pans of brass,

And the lovely hideous freaks I found in pewter and in glass!

And, oh, the sideboards, candlesticks, the cracked old china plates,

The clocks and spoons from Amsterdam that antedate all dates!

Of such superb monstrosities I found an endless mine

When I was broke in London in the fall of ’89.

O ye that hanker after boons that others idle by,—

The battered things that please the soul, though they may vex the eye,—

The silver plate and crockery all sanctified with grime,

The oaken stuff that has defied the tooth of envious Time,

The musty tomes, the speckled prints, the mildewed bills of play,

And other costly relics of malodorous decay,—

Ye only can appreciate what agony was mine

When I was broke in London in the fall of ’89.

When, in the course of natural things, I go to my reward,

Let no imposing epitaph my martyrdoms record;

Neither in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, nor any classic tongue,

Let my ten thousand triumphs over human griefs be sung;

But in plain Anglo-Saxon—that he may know who seeks

What agonizing pangs I ’ve had while on the hunt for freaks—

Let there be writ upon the slab that marks my grave this line:

“Deceased was broke in London in the fall of ’89.”

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