| |
| I GO to concert, party, ball— | |
| What profit is in these? | |
| I sit alone against the wall, | |
| And strive to look at ease. | |
| The incense that is mine by right | 5 |
| They burn before Her shrine; | |
| And that’s because I’m seventeen | |
| And She is forty-nine. | |
| |
| I cannot check my girlish blush, | |
| My colour comes and goes; | 10 |
| I redden to my finger-tips, | |
| And sometimes to my nose; | |
| But She is white where white should be | |
| And red where red should shine— | |
| The blush that flies at seventeen | 15 |
| Is fixed at forty-nine. | |
| |
| I wish I had Her constant cheek: | |
| I wish that I could sing | |
| All sorts of funny little songs, | |
| Not quite the proper thing. | 20 |
| I’m very gauche and very shy; | |
| Her jokes are n’t in my line; | |
| And, worst of all, I’m seventeen, | |
| While she is forty-nine. | |
| |
| The young men come, the young men go, | 25 |
| Each pink and white and neat, | |
| She’s older than their mothers, but | |
| They grovel at Her feet; | |
| They walk beside Her ’rickshaw wheels— | |
| They never walk by mine; | 30 |
| And that’s because I’m seventeen | |
| And She is forty-nine. | |
| |
| She rides with half a dozen men | |
| (She calls them “boys” and “mashers”); | |
| I trot along the Mall alone. | 35 |
| My prettiest frocks and sashes | |
| Don’t help to fill my programme-card, | |
| And vainly I repine | |
| From 10 to 2 A.M. Ah me! | |
| Would I were forty-nine! | 40 |
| |
| She calls me “darling,” “pet,” and “dear,” | |
| And “sweet retiring maid.” | |
| I’m always at the back, I know; | |
| She puts me in the shade. | |
| She introduces me to men, | 45 |
| “Cast” lovers, I opine, | |
| For sixty takes to seventeen, | |
| Nineteen to forty-nine. | |
| |
| But even She must older grow | |
| And end Her dancing days; | 50 |
| She can’t go on forever so | |
| At concerts, balls, and plays! | |
| One ray of priceless hope I see | |
| Before my footsteps shine: | |
| Just think that she’ll be eighty-one | 55 |
| When I am forty-nine. | |
| |
