An ample hall, a stair with wide And smooth ascent, and prints of date By cognoscenti much decried, And everything the cultured hate— Flounced sofas, mantel-pieces dread, Spatting and tatting, varnished nuts,— 'This is a house,' my critic said, 'Sunk low in old Victorian ruts.' Yet, when I see it, I behold Another house, austere, refined, A relic of an age of gold, Where once Napoleon's Marshals dined. And when my Mid-Victorian sweet, White woolly shawl on shoulders, comes Her complex modern friends to greet, I hear the roll of old French drums, And, looming through her, mark full-dressed My great-aunt, who had often seen A small, grand, sallow, snaky-tressed Italian with his Josephine! My Mid-Victorian hostess fair Deals in vile tea, extremely weak: I dream her cups the bonbonnière My baby hands would often seek In search of little purple sweets, Which soothed the talk of old and young, Long ere the days of Johnny Keats And long ere Hugo's praise was sung. The woolly shawl to lace is turned, The fatuous talk is re-transformed: An old voice talks of houses burned, Urbanely, and of cities stormed. An old voice, in deliberate French, Talks unaffectedly of where Some cousin died in Leipzig's trench, And of @3Ce Citoyen@1 Robespierre. Child as I was, I found her slow Grand manner, quite devoid of pose, A bore, but now I would re-know That quaintness, calm and fine, God knows! |