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Floreat Etona
TWELVE years ago I made a mock | |
| Of filthy trades and traffics: | |
| I wondered what they meant by stock; | |
| I wrote delightful sapphics; | |
| I knew the streets of Rome and Troy, | 5 |
| I supped with Fates and Furies,— | |
| Twelve years ago I was a boy, | |
| A happy boy, at Drury’s. | |
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| Twelve years ago! how many a thought | |
| Of faded pains and pleasures | 10 |
| Those whispered syllables have brought | |
| From Memory’s hoarded treasures! | |
| The fields, the farms, the bats, the books, | |
| The glories and disgraces, | |
| The voices of dear friends, the looks | 15 |
| Of old familiar faces! | |
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| Kind mater smiles again to me, | |
| As bright as when we parted; | |
| I seem again the frank, the free, | |
| Stout-limbed, and simple-hearted! | 20 |
| Pursuing every idle dream, | |
| And shunning every warning; | |
| With no hard work but Bovney stream, | |
| No chill except Long Morning: | |
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| Now stopping Harry Vernon’s ball | 25 |
| That rattled like a rocket; | |
| Now hearing Wentworth’s “fourteen all!” | |
| And striking for the pocket; | |
| Now feasting on a cheese and flitch,— | |
| Now drinking from the pewter; | 30 |
| Now leaping over Chalvey ditch, | |
| Now laughing at my tutor. | |
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| Where are my friends? I am alone; | |
| No playmate shares my beaker: | |
| Some lie beneath the churchyard stone, | 35 |
| And some—before the Speaker; | |
| And some compose a tragedy, | |
| And some compose a rondo; | |
| And some draw sword for Liberty, | |
| And some draw pleas for John Doe. | 40 |
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| Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes | |
| Without the fear of sessions; | |
| Charles Medlar loathed false quantities, | |
| As much as false professions; | |
| Now Mill keeps order in the land, | 45 |
| A magistrate pedantic; | |
| And Medlar’s feet repose unscanned | |
| Beneath the wide Atlantic. | |
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| Wild Nick, whose oaths made such a din, | |
| Does Dr. Martext’s duty; | 50 |
| And Mullion, with that monstrous chin, | |
| Is married to a beauty; | |
| And Darrell studies, week by week, | |
| His Mant, and not his Manton; | |
| And Ball, who was but poor at Greek, | 55 |
| Is very rich at Canton. | |
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| And I am eight-and-twenty now;— | |
| The world’s cold chains have bound me; | |
| And darker shades are on my brow, | |
| And sadder scenes around me: | 60 |
| In Parliament I fill my seat, | |
| With many other noodles; | |
| And lay my head in Jermyn Street, | |
| And sip my hock at Boodle’s. | |
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| But often, when the cares of life | 65 |
| Have set my temples aching, | |
| When visions haunt me of a wife, | |
| When duns await my waking, | |
| When Lady Jane is in a pet, | |
| Or Hoby in a hurry, | 70 |
| When Captain Hazard wins a bet. | |
| Or Beaulieu spoils a curry,— | |
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| For hours and hours I think and talk | |
| Of each remembered hobby; | |
| I long to lounge in Poets’ Walk, | 75 |
| To shiver in the lobby; | |
| I wish that I could run away | |
| From House, and Court, and Levee, | |
| Where bearded men appear to-day | |
| Just Eton boys grown heavy,— | 80 |
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| That I could back in childhood’s sun | |
| And dance o’er childhood’s roses, | |
| And find huge wealth in one pound one, | |
| Vast wit in broken noses, | |
| And play Sir Giles at Datchet Lane, | 85 |
| And call the milkmaids Houris,— | |
| That I could be a boy again,— | |
| A happy boy,—at Drury’s. | |
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