  The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar, Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown, Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far; And he glides to the end where the lunch baskets are And they say that he tipples alone. His frock-coat is green and the nap is no more, And the style of his hat is at rest. He wears the peaked collar our grandfathers wore, The black-ribboned tie that was legal of yore, And the coat buttoned over his breast. When first he came in, for a moment I thought That my vision or wits were astray; For a picture and page out of Dickens he brought, ’Twas an old file dropped in from the Chancery Court To a wine-vault just over the way. But I dreamed as he tasted his bitters to-night, And the lights in the bar-room grew dim, That the shades of the friends of that other day’s light, And of girls that were bright in our grandfathers’ sight, Lifted shadowy glasses to him. And I opened the door as the old man passed out, With his short, shuffling step and bowed head; And I sighed, for I felt as I turned me about, An odd sense of respect—born of whisky no doubt— For the life that was fifty years dead. And I thought—there are times when our memory trends Through the future, as ’twere, on its own— That I, out of date ere my pilgrimage ends, In a new fashioned bar to dead loves and dead friends Might drink like the old man alone: While they whisper, ‘He boozes alone.’ |
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