I WHO now remembers Almack's balls - Willis's sometime named - In those two smooth-floored upper halls For faded ones so famed? Where as we trod to trilling sound The fancied phantoms stood around, Or joined us in the maze, Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years, Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers, The fairest of former days. II Who now remembers gay Cremorne, And all its jaunty jills, And those wild whirling figures born Of Jullien's grand quadrilles? With hats on head and morning coats There footed to his prancing notes Our partner-girls and we; And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked, And the platform throbbed as with arms enlinked We moved to the minstrelsy. III Who now recalls those crowded rooms Of old yclept 'The Argyle', Where to the deep Drum-polka's booms We hopped in standard style? Whither have danced those damsels now! Is Death the partner who doth moue Their wormy chaps and bare? Do their spectres spin like sparks within The smoky halls of the Prince of Sin To a thunderous Jullien air? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: PAULINE BARRETT by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SUPPLICATION by JOSEPH SEAMON COTTER JR. THE CAT by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES NATIONALITY by THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS THE LOST JEWEL by EMILY DICKINSON THE CONGO by NICHOLAS VACHEL LINDSAY THE BOBBIN-WINDER by JOSEPHINE ELIZABETH ARCHER THE MAUSOLEUM by WILLIAM EDMONSTOUNE AYTOUN HUNTING: EPILOGUE. TO HAVE A FAITHFUL FRIEND by JULIANA BERNERS |