For--as long melodies are sweet, but sweeter Poems in short instalments, such as mine-- Seven full days, teased puppet of this metre, Must thy parched tongue await that roseate wine; Seven full nights, fond boy, must thou entreat her; Whilst mantle to her cheeks, incarnadine, Youth’s beauty, beauty’s youth--and readers vex’t Know, need know, nothing more till Tuesday next. V. _Brings life to week-old statues; makes them prance To love’s light tune--and ends the Seymours’ dance._ Pale shapes I locked in memory’s studio, Your draperies stir. From vein to marble vein The life-blood leaps. Eyes gleam, and pulses glow. Once more my octaves rap their old refrain To re-create the weekly puppet-show. Fond boy, to work! My Jill’s herself again, And answers your entreaty--sideways glancing-- “Perhaps I will. It’s jolly hot for dancing.” So they twain pass--smart sub. and flapper stately-- From the high halls of Gunter’s prank’t refection. And out across the waxèd boards, where lately Twirled the swift waltz to _La Poupée’s_ “Selection.” And on, past couples gossiping sedately; And on, past couples screened against detection; To a dim-shaded, fairy-lighted alcove, Fit haunt for single maid and single tall cove:-- Such as--in land of Taj Mahal and mugger, Where girls book weeks ahead their supper dances-- Screens some pale flirt, some lad who yearns to hug her, From the brown _khitmatghar’s_ averted glances. (Who knows thy secrets, darkling _Kala-juggah_-- The orbs downcast, the fingers’ coy advances, The swiftly stifled sob that hooks the stripling-- Save I, Victoria Cross, and Rudyard Kipling!) And there, beneath the new-sponged potted palm-tree, That mid-day brought and morning shall remove-- Mayfair’s own wind-unruffled, ever-calm tree, Whose drooping branches shield Mayfairies’ love-- She lisps of Waller parts, and thy dead charm, Tree (Twin stars now shining in the “flies” above!); While he admits he has or hasn’t seen them ... Till a shy sudden silence falls between them, A cloud across the sun of lightling banter. O Jill, my gold-spoon cake-and-Moët miss! Hast thou not dreamed, since thy first tam-o’-shanter, Of soldier boy, of dance-night such as this? Faintly they catch the polka’s throb, the canter Of homing hansom-cab where lovers kiss: And “Oh,” thinks he, “what eyes, what lips, what hair, too!” And “Oh,” thinks she “the ninny doesn’t dare to.”