WHEN I last had the pleasure—one day in the City—

Of seeing poor Brown, I was forcibly struck

By his alter'd appearance, and thought, What, a pity

To see the old fellow so down on his luck.

From the crown of a hat that was horribly seedy

To shoes that were dreadfully down at the heel

He suggested a type of the poor and the needy—

A sketch at full length of the shabby-genteel.

There were holes in his gloves—his umbrella was cotton—

His coat was a faded invisible green;

And in prominent bulbs, through the trowsers he'd got on,

The marks of his knees, or patellae, were seen.

But it seem'd above all inexpressibly painful

To notice the efforts he made to conceal—

By a tone partly nervous and partly disdainful—

The fact of his looking so shabby-genteel.

"How is business?" I ask'd him;—"and what are you doing?"

To tell you the truth I decidedly had

A belief that the trade he had last been pursuing

(Whatever its nature) had gone to the bad..

His reply was a sigh:—it was little good urging

The questions afresh, for I could not but feel

That he saw not a prospect of ever emerging

Above the dead-level of shabby-genteel.

When we parted I sunk into gloomy reflection—

A state of the mind that I hate, by the way—

And I gave my Brown-studies a moral direction—

Though, put into poetry, morals don't pay.

Here's the truth I evolved, if I quite recollect it:

Frail Fortune one day, by a turn of the wheel,

May despatch you or me, sir, when least we expect it,

To march in the ranks of the shabby-genteel.