Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SPANISH BARBER, by ROWLAND EYLES EGERTON-WARBURTON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SPANISH BARBER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: What sights abound the world around, let tourists live and learn
Last Line: And, conscious of a triumph, said, servito, señor.
Alternate Author Name(s): Egerton-warburton, R. E.
Subject(s): Barbers; Beards; Spain


WHAT sights abound the world around, let tourists live and learn;
And Brown and Jones and Robinson go visit each in turn:
The battle-field at Waterloo, the bull-fight at Madrid,
While some delight their names to write on Cheops' pyramid.

Some tour to Tours, some roam to Rome, some trip to Tripoli;
Still something strange, where'er they range, for travellers to see.
To me no sight gave such delight as I at Seville felt
When I stood before the very door where Figaro had dwelt.

A fencing foil the Frenchman with dexterity can twist;
Pre-eminent is England in the science of the fist;
But with Spain no other nation in the universe can cope
In expert manipulation of the shaving-brush and soap.

My beard, when I reach'd Alicant, was like a currycomb,
Or, "like a stubble-land new reap'd, it show'd at harvest-home;"
With anxious step I wander'd till, suspended high in air,
A brazen basin told me that the spot I sought was there.

I thrust aside the curtain-veil that screens it from the street;
The Barber bows, and beckons to a softly-cushion'd seat;
Enfolds me in a napkin, white as snow on mountain top,
And to and fro the blade revers'd glides glibly o'er the strop.

A bungling British shaver would have seized me by the nose,
Would have brush'd my lip with lather where no hair upon it grows,
With shrug and screw and sacre-bleu at beard so overgrown,
A Frenchman would have held my jaw, and not have held his own.

My parch'd and thirsty beard an irrigation over flows,
A saponaceous liquid sweetly perfum'd by the rose;
His blade, as still he pass'd it and repass'd it o'er my chin,
I felt as if a lightning-flash were playing on the skin!

So skill'd within due limits still its keenness to confine,
He touch'd not there a single hair beyond the shaving-line.
How I wish'd it, when completed, how I wish'd it just begun,
A work of art so delicately, exquisitely done!

I felt as if my chin were iced when, penetrating through,
The balmy air of morning on the shaven surface blew;
He powder'd it, unnapkin'd it, and then he look'd me o'er;
And, conscious of a triumph, said, Servito, Señor.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net