Harry Graham - Familiar Faces

Lips that I pressed to my own,
As I gazed at her yielding form, —
Turned with a groan, and then hastened alone
Into the teeth of the Storm!
Long, long ago! Still the winds blow!
Far have we drifted apart!
You live with Mother, and I love – another!
Dear Heart, Dear Heart!

At times some drinking-song inspires
Our hero to a vocal burst,
Until his audience, too, acquires
The most prodigious thirst.
And nobody would ever think
That milk was his peculiar drink!

What spacious days his song recalls,
When each monastic brotherhood
Could brew, within its private walls,
A vintage just as good
As that which restaurants purvey
As "rare old Tawny Port" to-day!

The Abbot he sits, as his rank befits,
With a bottle at either knee,
And he smacks his lips as he slowly sips
At his beaker of Malvoisie.
Sing Ho! Ho! Ho!
Let the red wine flow!
Let the sack flow fast and free!
His heart it grows merry on negus and sherry,
And never a care has he!
Ho! Ho!
(Ora pro nobis!)
Sing Ho! for the Malvoisie!

In cellar cool, on a highbacked stool,
The Friar he sits him down,
With the door tight shut, and an unbroached butt
Where the ale flows clear and brown.
Sing Ha! Sing Hi!
Till the cask runs dry,
His spirits shall never fail!
For no one is dryer than Francis the Friar,
When getting "outside the pail!"
Ho! Ho!
(Benedicimus!)
Sing Ho! for the nutbrown ale!

The Monk sits there, in his cell so bare,
And he lowers his tonsured head,
As he lifts the lid of the tankard hid
'Neath the straw of his trestle bed.
Sing Ho! Sink Hey!
From the break of day
Till the vesper-bell rings clear,
Of grave he makes merry and hastens to bury
His cares in the butt'ry bier!
Ho! Ho!
(Pax Omnibuscum!)
Sing Ho! for the buttery beer!

Oh, find me some secure retreat,
Some Paradise for stricken souls,
Where amateurs no longer bleat
Their feeble baracoles,
From lungs that are so oddly placed
Where other people keep their waist;

Where public taste has quite outgrown
The faculty for being bored
By each anæmic baritone
Who murders "The Lost Chord,"
And singers, as a body, are
Cursed with a permanent catarrh!

Long ago, our English actors
Ranked with rogues and vagabonds;
They were jailed as malefactors,
They were ducked in village ponds.
In the stocks the beadle shut them,
While the friends they chanced to meet
Would invariably cut them
In the street.

With suspicion people eyed them,
Ev'ry country-squire would feel
That his fallow-deer supplied them
With the makings of a meal.
They annexed the parson's rabbits,
Poached the pheasants of the peer,
And had other little habits
Just as queer!

Even Will, the Bard of Avon,
As a poacher stands confest,
And altho', of course, cleanshaven,
Was as barefaced as the rest.
He, a player by vocation,
Practised, like his buckskin'd pals,
Indiscriminate flirtation
With the gals!

Now, the am'rous actor's cravings
For romance are orthodox;
Nowadays he puts his savings,
Not his ankles, into "stocks."
Nobody to-day is doubting
That a halo round him clings;
One can see his shoulders sprouting
Into wings.

Watch the mummer managerial,
Centre of a rev'rent group;
Note with what an air imperial
He controls his timid troupe.
Deadheads scrape and bow before him,
To his doors the public flocks;
Even duchesses implore him
For a box.

Enemies, no doubt, will tell us
(What we should not ever guess)
That he is absurdly jealous
Of subordinates' success.
Minor mimes who score a hit or
Threaten to advance too fast,
Are advised to curb their wit or
Leave the cast!

Foes declare that, at rehearsal,
Managers are free of speech,
And unduly prone to curse all
Those who come within their reach.
With some tiny dams (or damlets)
They exhort each "walking gent – "
Language that potential Hamlets
Much resent.

Do not autocrats, dictators,
All who lead successful lives,
Swear repeatedly at waiters,
Curse consistently at wives?
Shall the heads of the Profession,
Histrionic argonauts,
Be denied the frank expression
Of their thoughts?

Will not we who so applaud them
Execrate with righteous rage
Player knaves who would defraud them
Of their centre of the stage?
Do we grudge these godlike creatures
Picture-cards that advertise —
Calcium lights that flood their features
From the flies?

No, for ev'ry leading actor
Who produces problem plays,
Is a most important factor
In the world of modern days.
Kings occasionally knight him,
Titled ladies take him up;
Even millionaires invite him
Out to sup.

Proudly he advances, trailing
Clouds of limelight from afar,
(Diffidence is not the failing
Of the true dramatic "star").
What cares he for rank or fashion,
Politics or place or pelf?
He whose one prevailing passion
Is himself?

All the world's a stage, we know it;
Managers, whose heads are twirled,
Think (to paraphrase the poet)
That the stage is all the world.
Other men discuss the summer,
Or the poor potato crop,
Nothing can prevent the mummer
Talking "shop."

With his Art as the objective
Of his intellectual pow'rs,
He (as usual, introspective)
Talks about himself for hours.
While his friends, who never dream of
Interrupting, stand agog,
He decants a ceaseless stream of
Monologue.

He is great. He has become it
By a long and arduous climb
To the crest, the crown, the summit
Of the Thespian tree – a lime !
There he chatters like a starling,
There, like Jove, he sometimes nods;
But he still remains the "darling
Of the gods !"

A monocle he always wears,
Safe screwed within his dexter eye;
His mouth stands open wide, and snares
The too intrusive fly.
Were he to close his jaws, no doubt,
The eyeglass would at once fall out.

His choice of clothes is truly weird;
His jacket, short, and negligée ,
Is slit behind, as tho' he feared
A tail might sprout some day.
One's eye must be inured to shocks
To stand the tartan of his socks.

The chessboard pattern of his check
Betrays its owner's florid taste;