Harry Graham - Familiar Faces

O my Author, do you hear the Autumn calling?
Does its message fail to reach you in your den,
Where the ink that once so sluggishly was crawling
Courses swiftly through your stylographic pen?
'Tis the season when the editor grows active,
When the office-boy looks longingly to you.
Won't you give him something novel and attractive
To review?

Never mind if you are frivolous or solemn,
If you only can be striking and unique,
The reviewers will concede you half a column
In their literary journals, any week.
And 'twill always be your publisher's ambition
To provide for the demand that you create,
And dispose of a gigantic first edition,
While you wait.

O my Author, can't you pull yourself together,
Try to expiate the failures of the past,
And just ask yourself dispassionately whether
You can't give us something better than your last?
If you really – if you truly – are a poet,
As you fancy – pray forgive my being terse —
Don't you think you might occasionally show it
In your verse?

O my Publisher, how dreadfully you bore me!
Of your censure I am frankly growing tired.
With your diatribes eternally before me,
How on earth can I expect to feel inspired?
You are orderly, no doubt, and systematic,
In that office where recumbent you recline;
You would modify your methods in an attic
Such as mine.

If you lived a sort of hand-to-mouth existence
(Where the mouth found less employment than the hand);
If your rhymes would lend your humour no assistance,
And your wit assumed a form that never scann'd;
If you sat and waited vainly at your table
While Calliope declined to give her cues,
You would realise how very far from stable
Was the Mews !

You would find it quite impossible to labour
With the patient perseverance of a drone,
While some tactless but enthusiastic neighbour
Played a cake walk on a wheezy gramophone,
While your peace was so disturbed by constant clatter,
That at length you grew accustomed – nay, resigned,
To the never-ending victory of Matter
Over Mind.

While you batten upon plovers' eggs and claret,
In the shelter of some fashionable club,
I am starving, very likely, in a garret,
Off the street so incorrectly labelled Grub,
Where the vintage smacks distinctly of the ink-butt,
And the atmosphere is redolent of toil,
And there's nothing for the journalist to drink but
Midnight oil!

It is useless to solicit inspiration
When one isn't in the true poetic mood,
When one contemplates the prospect of starvation,
And one's little ones are clamouring for food.
When one's tongue remains ingloriously tacit,
One is forced with some reluctance to admit
That, alas! (as Virgil said) Poeta nascit -
- Ur, non fit !

Then, my Publisher, be gentle with your poet;
Do not treat him with the harshness he deserves,
For, in fact, altho' you little seem to know it,
You are gradually getting on his nerves.
Kindly dam the foaming torrent of your curses,
While I ask you, – yes, and pause for a reply, —
Are you writing this immortal book of verses,
Or am I ?

Gentle Reader, charge your tumbler
With anæmic lemonade!
Let us toast our fellow-fumbler,
Who was surely born, not made.
None of all our friends is "dearer"
(Costs us more – to be jocose – );
No relation could be nearer,
More intensely "close"!

Hear him indistinctly mumbling
"Oh, I say, do let me pay!"
Watch him in his pocket fumbling,
In a dilatory way;
Plumbing the unmeasured deeps there,
With some muttered vague excuse,
For the coinage that he keeps there,
But will not produce.

If he joins you in a hansom,
You alone provide the fare;
Not for all a monarch's ransom
Would he pay his modest share.
He may fumble with his collar,
He may turn his pockets out,
He can never find that dollar
Which he spoke about!

Cigarettes he sometimes offers,
With a sort of old-world grace,
But, when you accept them, proffers
With surprise, an empty case.
Your cigars, instead, he'll snatch, and,
With the cunning of the fox,
Ask you firmly for a match, and
Pocket half your box!

If with him a meal you share, too,
You'll discover, when you've dined,
That your friend has taken care to
Leave his frugal purse behind.
"We must sup together later,"
He remarks, with right good-will,
"Pass the Heidsieck, please; and, waiter,
Bring my friend the bill!"

At some crowded railway station
He comes running up to you,
And exclaims with agitation,
"Take my ticket, will you, too?"
Though his pow'rs of conversation
In the train require no spur,
To this trifling obligation
He will not refer!

When at Bridge you win his money,
Do not think it odd or strange
If he says, "It's very funny,
But I find I've got no change!
Do remind me what I owe you,
When you see me in the street."
Mr. Fumbler, if I know you,
We shall never meet!

Fumbler, so serenely fumbling
In a pocket with thy thumb,
Never by good fortune stumbling
On the necessary sum,
Cease to make polite pretences,
Suited to thy niggard ends,
Of dividing the expenses
With confiding friends!

Here, we crown thee, fumbling brother,
With the fumbler's well-earned wreath,
Who would'st rob thine aged mother
Of her artificial teeth!
We at length are slowly learning
That some friendships cost too dear.
"Longest worms must have a turning,"
And our turn is near!

Henceforth, when a cab thou takest,
Thou a lonely way must wend;
Henceforth, when for food thou achest,
Thou must dine without a friend.
Thine excuses thou shalt mumble
Down some public telephone,
And if thou perforce must fumble,
Fumble all alone!

In many a boudoir nowadays
The baritone's decolleté throat
Produces weird unearthly lays,
Like some dyspeptic goat
Deprived but lately of her young
(But not, alas! of either lung).

His low-necked collar fails to show
The contours of his manly chest,
Since that has fallen far below
His "fancy evening vest."
Here, too, in picturesque relief,
Nestles his crimson handkerchief.

Will no one tell me why he sings
Such doleful melancholy lays,
Of withered summers, ruined springs,
Of happier bygone days,
And kindred topics, more or less
Designed to harass or depress?

That ballad in his bloated hand
Is of the old familiar blend: —
A faded flow'r, a maiden, and
A "brave kiss" at the end!
(The kind of kiss that, for a bet,
A man might give a Suffragette.)

Eyes that looked down into mine,
With a longing that seemed to say
Is it too late, dear heart, to wait
For the dawn of a brighter day?
Is it too late to laugh at fate?
See how the teardrops start!
Can we not weather the tempest together,
Dear Heart, Dear Heart?