Robert W. Service. Robert W. Service

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СКАЧАТЬ hadn’t a word to say.

      He thought with a shiver: “Can this be she?”

      She thought with a shudder: “This can’t be he?”

      This simpering dandy, so sleek and spruce;

      This languorous lily in garments loose;

      They sought to brace from the awful shock:

      Taking a seat, they tried to talk.

      She spoke of Bergson and Pater’s prose,

      He prattled of dances and ragtime shows;

      She purred of pictures, Matisse, Cezanne,

      His tastes to the girls of Kirchner ran;

      She raved of Tschaikowsky and Caesar Franck,

      He owned that he was a jazz band crank!

      They made no headway. Alas! alas!

      He thought her a bore, she thought him an ass.

      And so they arose and hurriedly fled;

      Perish Illusion, Romance, you’re dead.

      He loved elegance, she loved art,

      Better at once to part, to part.

      And what is the moral of this rot?

      Don’t try to be what you know you’re not.

      And if you’re made on a muttonish plan,

      Don’t seek to seem a Bohemian;

      And if to the goats your feet incline,

      Don’t try to pass for a Philistine.

      II

      A SMALL CAFÉ IN A SIDE STREET,

      June 1914.

      The Bohemian Dreams

      Because my overcoat’s in pawn,

      I choose to take my glass

      Within a little bistro on

      The rue du Montparnasse;

      The dusty bins with bottles shine,

      The counter’s lined with zinc,

      And there I sit and drink my wine,

      And think and think and think.

      I think of hoary old Stamboul,

      Of Moslem and of Greek,

      Of Persian in a coat of wool,

      Of Kurd and Arab sheikh;

      Of all the types of weal and woe,

      And as I raise my glass,

      Across Galata bridge I know

      They pass and pass and pass.

      I think of citron trees aglow,

      Of fan-palms shading down,

      Of sailors dancing heel and toe

      With wenches black and brown;

      And though it’s all an ocean far

      From Yucatan to France,

      I’ll bet beside the old bazaar

      They dance and dance and dance.

      I think of Monte Carlo, where

      The pallid croupiers call,

      And in the gorgeous, guilty air

      The gamblers watch the ball;

      And as I flick away the foam

      With which my beer is crowned,

      The wheels beneath the gilded dome

      Go round and round and round.

      I think of vast Niagara,

      Those gulfs of foam a-shine,

      Whose mighty roar would stagger a

      More prosy bean than mine;

      And as the hours I idly spend

      Against a greasy wall,

      I know that green the waters bend

      And fall and fall and fall.

      I think of Nijni Novgorod

      And Jews who never rest;

      And womenfolk with spade and hod

      Who slave in Buda-Pest;

      Of squat and sturdy Japanese

      Who pound the paddy soil,

      And as I loaf and smoke at ease

      they toil and toil and toil.

      I think of shrines in Hindustan,

      Of cloistral glooms in Spain,

      Of minarets in Ispahan,

      Of St. Sophia’s fane,

      Of convent towers in Palestine,

      Of temples in Cathay,

      And as I stretch and sip my wine

      They pray and pray and pray.

      And so my dreams I dwell within,

      And visions come and go,

      And life is passing like a Cin-

      Ematographic Show;

      Till just as surely as my pipe

      Is underneath my nose,

      Amid my visions rich and ripe

      I doze and doze and doze.

      From “Book Four: Winter”

      IV

      A Lapse of Time and a Word of Explanation

      THE AMERICAN HOSPITAL, NEUILLY,

      January 1919.

      Four СКАЧАТЬ