YOUTH AND ART. 1. IT once might have been, once only: 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 ere long, And Grisi's existence embittered!" 4. I earned no more by a warble You wanted a piece of marble, 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, Cap and blouse-nay, a bit of beard too; 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. 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?" Could 66 13. 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've married a rich old lord, And you 're dubbed knight and an R. A. 16. Each life's unfulfilled, you see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired,—been happy. 17. And nobody calls you a dunce, And we missed it, lost it for ever. |