| |
| IN tattered old slippers that toast at the bars, | |
| And a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars, | |
| Away from the world and its toils and its cares, | |
| I ’ve a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs. | |
| |
| To mount to this realm is a toil, to be sure, | 5 |
| But the fire there is bright and the air rather pure; | |
| And the view I behold on a sunshiny day | |
| Is grand through the chimney-pots over the way. | |
| |
| This snug little chamber is crammed in all nooks | |
| With worthless old knick-knacks and silly old books, | 10 |
| And foolish old odds and foolish old ends, | |
| Cracked bargains from brokers, cheap keepsakes from friends. | |
| |
| Old armor, prints, pictures, pipes, china (all cracked), | |
| Old rickety tables, and chairs broken-backed; | |
| A twopenny treasury, wondrous to see; | 15 |
| What matter? ’t is pleasant to you, friend, and me. | |
| |
| No better divan need the Sultan require, | |
| Than the creaking old sofa that basks by the fire; | |
| And ’t is wonderful, surely, what music you get | |
| From the rickety, ramshackle, wheezy spinet. | 20 |
| |
| That praying-rug came from a Turcoman’s camp; | |
| By Tiber once twinkled that brazen old lamp; | |
| A Mameluke fierce yonder dagger has drawn: | |
| ’T is a murderous knife to toast muffins upon. | |
| |
| Long, long, through the hours, and the night, and the chimes, | 25 |
| Here we talk of old books, and old friends, and old times; | |
| As we sit in a fog made of rich Latakie | |
| This chamber is pleasant to you, friend, and me. | |
| |
| But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest, | |
| There ’s one that I love and I cherish the best: | 30 |
| For the finest of couches that ’s padded with hair | |
| I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair. | |
| |
| ’T is a bandy-legged, high-shouldered, worm-eaten seat, | |
| With a breaking old back, and twisted old feet; | |
| But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there, | 35 |
| I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair. | |
| |
| If chairs have but feeling, in holding such charms, | |
| A thrill must have passed through your withered old arms; | |
| I looked, and I longed, and I wished in despair; | |
| I wished myself turned to a cane-bottomed chair. | 40 |
| |
| It was but a moment she sat in this place, | |
| She ’d a scarf on her neck, and a smile on her face! | |
| A smile on her face, and a rose in her hair, | |
| And she sat there, and bloomed in my cane-bottomed chair. | |
| |
| And so I have valued my chair ever since, | 45 |
| Like the shrine of a saint, or the throne of a prince; | |
| Saint Fanny, my patroness sweet I declare, | |
| The queen of my heart and my cane-bottomed chair. | |
| |
| When the candles burn low, and the company ’s gone, | |
| In the silence of night as I sit here alone— | 50 |
| I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair— | |
| My Fanny I see in my cane-bottomed chair. | |
| |
| She comes from the past and revisits my room; | |
| She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom; | |
| So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair, | 55 |
| And yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair. | |
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