Poetry
To Jimmy
BIDDING HIM TO A SABINE SUPPER To-MORROW, if these omens hold Of rising glass and sunset-gold, If anticyclone's • brooding calm Fill the rich dusk with warmth and balm,- We'll risk the fell rheumatic twinge That haunts the rusty lumbar hinge,
And sup sub Jove, as a old.
Here shall the decent claim*, laid For two beside the cedar-Shade, Glimmer beneath the windless spires Of tapers steady as the fires .
Of FOnialhaut or Antares, Low hung behind the poplar-trees That hush their whispered serenade, Simple the fare, but purely neat ; A crusty _loaf of country wheat, A brace of trout from Barson Brook (So fortune guide my morrow's hook), A pig of cider set to cool Beside us in the lily-pool, With golden gages, make the treat.
And grace be said that we can dine After the antique choice design, .
And banquet like those early kings • Who did- without a most of things
Demanded by the- rout,
Yet knew the art f drawing out - • • The summer night with talk benign.
But if the glass should prove a cheat, And sunset turn to hail or sleet, Depressions on depressions sink To drown the world from skies of ink, What matter though it blows or pours ? We'll move our little feast indoors, And wake the hearthstone's genial heat.
Should eve be drenched in scudding rain, Shut out the streaming window-pane!
Dissolve frigus, for the logs Are ready laid across the dogs.
So either way, or bask or freeze, Blest in the old Horatian ease, We'll count the given hour as gain.
G. FORRESTER SCOTT.
Previous page
