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(Grandpapa Loquitur)
YOU don’t know Froissart now, young folks. | |
| This age, I think, prefers recitals | |
| Of high-spiced crime, with “slang” for jokes, | |
| And startling titles. | |
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| But, in my time, when still some few | 5 |
| Loved “old Montaigne,” and praised Pope’s Homer | |
| (Nay, thought to style him “poet” too, | |
| Were scarce misnomer), | |
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| Sir John was less ignored. Indeed, | |
| I can recall how Some-one present | 10 |
| (Who spoils her grandson, Frank!) would read | |
| And find him pleasant; | |
| |
| For,—by this copy,—hangs a Tale. | |
| Long since, in an old house in Surrey, | |
| Where men knew more of “morning ale” | 15 |
| Than “Lindley Murray,” | |
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| In a dim-lighted, whip-hung hall, | |
| ’Neath Hogarth’s “Midnight Conversation,” | |
| It stood; and oft ’twixt spring and fall, | |
| With fond elation, | 20 |
| |
| I turned the old brown leaves. For there | |
| All through one hopeful happy summer, | |
| At such a page (I well knew where), | |
| Some secret comer, | |
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| Whom I can picture, ’Trix, like you | 25 |
| (Though scarcely such a colt unbroken), | |
| Would sometimes place for private view | |
| A certain token;— | |
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| A rose-leaf meaning “Garden Wall,” | |
| An ivy leaf for “Orchard corner,” | 30 |
| A thorn to say “Don’t come at all,”— | |
| Unwelcome warner!— | |
| |
| Not that, in truth, our friends gainsaid; | |
| But then Romance required dissembling, | |
| (Ann Radcliffe taught us that!) which bred | 35 |
| Some genuine trembling; | |
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| Though, as a rule, all used to end | |
| In such kind confidential parley | |
| As may to you kind Fortune send, | |
| You long-legged Charlie, | 40 |
| |
| When your time comes. How years slip on! | |
| We had our crosses like our betters; | |
| Fate sometimes looked askance upon | |
| Those floral letters; | |
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| And once, for three long days disdained, | 45 |
| The dust upon the folio settled; | |
| For some-one, in the right, was pained, | |
| And some-one nettled, | |
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| That sure was in the wrong, but spake | |
| Of fixed intent and purpose stony | 50 |
| To serve King George, enlist and make | |
| Minced-meat of “Boney,” | |
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| Who yet survived—ten years at least. | |
| And so, when she I mean came hither, | |
| One day that need for letters ceased, | 55 |
| She brought this with her! | |
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| Here is the leaf-stained chapter:—How | |
| The English King laid Siege to Calais; | |
| I think Gran. knows it even now,— | |
| Go ask her, Alice. | 60 |
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