CALEDONIAN MARKET

A WORK-BASKET made of an old armadillo

Lined with pink satin now rotten with age,

A novel entitled The Ostracised Vicar

With a spider squashed flat on the title-page,

A faded album of nineteen-oh-seven

Snapshots (now like very weak tea) Showing high-collared knuts and girls expectant In big muslin hats at Bexhill-on-Sea,

A gasolier made of hand-beaten copper In the once modern style known as art nouveau, An assegai, and a china slipper, And What a Young Scoutmaster Ought to Know.

Who stood their umbrellas in elephants' feet?

Who hung their hats on the horns of a moose?

Who crossed the ocean with amulets made To be hung round the neck of an ailing papoose?

Who paid her calls with a sandalwood card-case?

From whose eighteen-inch waist hung that thin chatelaine?

Who smoked that meerschaum? Who won that medal?

That extraordinary vase was evolved by what brain?

Who worked in wool the convolvulus bell-pull?

Who smiled with those false teeth? Who wore that wig?

Who had that hair-tidy hung by her mirror?

Whose was the scent-bottle shaped like a pig?

Where are the lads in their tight Norfolk jackets Who roistered in pubs that stayed open all day? Where are the girls in their much tighter corsets And where are the figures they loved to display? Where the old maids in their bric-à-brac settings With parlourmaids bringing them dinners and teas? Where are their counterparts, idle old roués, Sodden old bachelors living at ease?

Where the big families, big with possessions, Their standards of living, their errors of taste? Here are the soup-tureens—where is the ambience, Arrogance, confidence, hope without haste?

Laugh if you like at this monstrous detritus Of middle-class life in the liberal past,

The platypus stuffed, and the frightful epergne.

You, who are now overtaxed and declassed, Laugh while you can, for the time may come round

When the rubbish you treasure will lie in this place—

Your wireless set (bust), your ridiculous hats, And the photographs of your period face.

Your best-selling novels, your " functional" chairs, Your primitive comforts and notions of style

Are just so much fodder for dealers in junk—

Let us hope that they'll make your grandchildren smile.

WILLIAM PLOMER.