| 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,— | 5 |
| 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,— | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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! | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| |
| 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 | 45 |
| 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." | |
