A PANTOMIMIC REVERIE.

(BY A “SLIPPERED PANTALOON.")

[Illustration]

  Tax-gatherers molest one’s door,
    The streets are choked with messy mist;
  I’m the proverbial Bachelor,
    An old, prosaic Pessimist. 
  Yet somehow—­who can tell me why?—­
    Urged by the Past’s dim Phantom, I’m
  Disposed my cosy Club to fly,
    And prank it at the Pantomime.

  A Phantom weird of things forgot! 
    My mother, proud of me at her
  Sweet side—­our yellow chariot—­
    The long, long drive—­the theatre—­
  My fear to miss—­my thrill when in—­
    The Fairy Queen, the jolly King—­
  The laughter flung at Harlequin,
    And Pantaloon arollicking.

  And sister PRUE, and brother TIM,
    (I scarcely recollected them),
  Magnificent in gala trim: 
    Dear me, how I respected them! 
  I deemed them quite grown up, so bold
    Seemed they, glared so defiantly: 
  Yet they, too, cowered to behold
    Prone before JACK the Giant lie.

  Yes!  Where is TIM, where PRUE, alack! 
    Where mother fondly pliant now? 
  Where for that matter too is JACK,
    And where the grisly Giant now? 
  In lonely stall, with vacant brow
    I sit and eye the coryphees: 
  In my time they were Fairies; now
    They seem to me but sorry fays.

  The pageantry is twice as grand,
    The wealth of wealth embarrasses;
  And yet this is not elfinland
    But great AUGUSTUS HARRIS’s. 
  The blase children vote it flat,
    When Mister Clown cries, “Here’s a go!”
  Yes, there’s the box where erst we sat
    And laughed so, sixty years ago.

  The very box:  I think, you know,
    The reason I’m so queer to-night
  Is merely because long ago
    Here faces were not here to-night. 
  I’d best be off—­Bless me! no Clown? 
    No Stage?—­no Past invidious? 
  No Orchestra?—­but simply BROWN
    Snoring the midnight hideous!

  No Drury Lane?—­no tinsel flare?—­
    No pirouetting Bogeydom?—­
  Only a Club, and one who there
    Forgot in sleep his Fogeydom! 
  Welcome my Transformation Scene;
    I’m dull once more, and every
  Old Bachelor like me, I ween,
    May muse at times his reverie.

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