Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OLD-FASHIONED LADIES (TO THE MEMORY OF MY GREAT-AUNT, MADAME K-), by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OLD-FASHIONED LADIES (TO THE MEMORY OF MY GREAT-AUNT, MADAME K-), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: An ample hall, a stair with wide
Last Line: That quaintness, calm and fine, god knows!
Subject(s): Aunts; Family Life; Maturity; Relationships; Relatives


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 Ce Citoyen 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!





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