And the crush in the passage, and last lingering look You give as you hang your best hat on the hook;
The rush of hot air as the door opens wide;
And your entry,--that blending of self-possessed pride And humility shown in your perfect-bred stare At the folk, as if wondering how they got there;
With other tricks worthy of Vanity Fair.
Meanwhile, the safe topic, the beat of the room, Already was losing its freshness and bloom;
Young people were yawning, and wondering when The dance would come off; and why didn't it then:
When a vague expectation was thrilling the crowd, Lo! the door swung its hinges with utterance proud!
And Pompey announced, with a trumpet-like strain, The entrance of Brown and Miss Addie De Laine.
She entered; but oh! how imperfect the verb To express to the senses her movement superb!
To say that she "sailed in" more clearly might tell Her grace in its buoyant and billowy swell.
Her robe was a vague circumambient space, With shadowy boundaries made of point-lace;
The rest was but guesswork, and well might defy The power of critical feminine eye To define or describe: 'twere as futile to try The gossamer web of the cirrus to trace, Floating far in the blue of a warm summer sky.
'Midst the humming of praises and glances of beaux That greet our fair maiden wherever she goes, Brown slipped like a shadow, grim, silent, and black, With a look of anxiety, close in her track.
Once he whispered aside in her delicate ear A sentence of warning,--it might be of fear:
"Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life."
(Nothing more,--such advice might be given your wife Or your sweetheart, in times of bronchitis and cough, Without mystery, romance, or frivolous scoff.)
But hark to the music; the dance has begun.
The closely draped windows wide open are flung;
The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light, Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night.
Round about go the dancers; in circles they fly;
Trip, trip, go their feet as their skirts eddy by;
And swifter and lighter, but somewhat too plain, Whisks the fair circumvolving Miss Addie De Laine.
Taglioni and Cerito well might have pined For the vigor and ease that her movements combined;
E'en Rigelboche never flung higher her robe In the naughtiest city that's known on the globe.
'Twas amazing, 'twas scandalous; lost in surprise, Some opened their mouths, and a few shut their eyes.
But hark! At the moment Miss Addie De Laine, Circling round at the outer edge of an ellipse Which brought her fair form to the window again, From the arms of her partner incautiously slips!
And a shriek fills the air, and the music is still, And the crowd gather round where her partner forlorn Still frenziedly points from the wide window-sill Into space and the night; for Miss Addie was gone!
Gone like the bubble that bursts in the sun;
Gone like the grain when the reaper is done;
Gone like the dew on the fresh morning grass;
Gone without parting farewell; and alas!
Gone with a flavor of hydrogen gas!
When the weather is pleasant, you frequently meet A white-headed man slowly pacing the street;
His trembling hand shading his lack-lustre eye, Half blind with continually scanning the sky.
Rumor points him as some astronomical sage, Re-perusing by day the celestial page;
But the reader, sagacious, will recognize Brown, Trying vainly to conjure his lost sweetheart down, And learn the stern moral this story must teach, That Genius may lift its love out of its reach.
A LEGEND OF COLOGNE
Above the bones St. Ursula owns, And those of the virgins she chaperons;
Above the boats, And the bridge that floats, And the Rhine and the steamers' smoky throats;
Above the chimneys and quaint-tiled roofs, Above the clatter of wheels and hoofs;
Above Newmarket's open space, Above that consecrated place Where the genuine bones of the Magi seen are, And the dozen shops of the real Farina;
Higher than even old Hohestrasse, Whose houses threaten the timid passer,--Above them all, Through scaffolds tall, And spires like delicate limbs in splinters, The great Cologne's Cathedral stones Climb through the storms of eight hundred winters.
Unfinished there, In high mid-air The towers halt like a broken prayer;
Through years belated, Unconsummated, The hope of its architect quite frustrated.
Its very youth They say, forsooth, With a quite improper purpose mated;
And every stone With a curse of its own Instead of that sermon Shakespeare stated, Since the day its choir, Which all admire, By Cologne's Archbishop was consecrated.
Ah! THAT was a day, One well might say, To be marked with the largest, whitest stone To be found in the towers of all Cologne!
Along the Rhine, From old Rheinstein, The people flowed like their own good wine.
From Rudesheim, And Geisenheim, And every spot that is known to rhyme;
From the famed Cat's Castle of St. Goarshausen, To the pictured roofs of Assmannshausen, And down the track, From quaint Schwalbach To the clustering tiles of Bacharach;
From Bingen, hence To old Coblentz:
From every castellated crag, Where the robber chieftains kept their "swag,"
The folk flowed in, and Ober-Cassel Shone with the pomp of knight and vassal;
And pouring in from near and far, As the Rhine to its bosom draws the Ahr, Or takes the arm of the sober Mosel, So in Cologne, knight, squire, and losel, Choked up the city's gates with men From old St. Stephen to Zint Marjen.
What had they come to see? Ah me!
I fear no glitter of pageantry, Nor sacred zeal For Church's weal, Nor faith in the virgins' bones to heal;
Nor childlike trust in frank confession Drew these, who, dyed in deep transgression, Still in each nest On every crest Kept stolen goods in their possession;
But only their gout For something new, More rare than the "roast" of a wandering Jew;
Or--to be exact--To see--in fact--A Christian soul, in the very act Of being damned, secundum artem, By the devil, before a soul could part 'em.
For a rumor had flown Throughout Cologne That the church, in fact, was the devil's own;
That its architect (Being long "suspect")
