  She risked her all, they told me, bravely sinking The pinched economies of thirty years; And there the little shop was, meek and shrinking, The sum of all her dreams and hopes and fears. Ere it was opened I would see them in it, The gray-haired dame, the daughter with her crutch; So fond, so happy, hoarding every minute, Like artists, for the final tender touch. The opening day! I'm sure that to their seeming Was never shop so wonderful as theirs; With pyramids of jam-jars rubbed to gleaming; Such vivid cans of peaches, prunes and pears; And chocolate, and biscuits in glass cases, And bon-bon bottles, many-hued and bright; Yet nothing half so radiant as their faces, Their eyes of hope, excitement and delight. I entered: how they waited all a-flutter! How awkwardly they weighed my acid-drops! And then with all the thanks a tongue could utter They bowed me from the kindliest of shops. I'm sure that night their customers they numbered; Discussed them all in happy, breathless speech; And though quite worn and weary, ere they slumbered, Sent heavenward a little prayer for each. And so I watched with interest redoubled That little shop, spent in it all I had; And when I saw it empty I was troubled, And when I saw them busy I was glad. And when I dared to ask how things were going, They told me, with a fine and gallant smile: "Not badly . . . slow at first . . . There's never knowing . . . 'Twill surely pick up in a little while." I'd often see them through the winter weather, Behind the shutters by a light's faint speck, Poring o'er books, their faces close together, The lame girl's arm around her mother's neck. They dressed their windows not one time but twenty, Each change more pinched, more desperately neat; Alas! I wondered if behind that plenty The two who owned it had enough to eat. Ah, who would dare to sing of tea and coffee? The sadness of a stock unsold and dead; The petty tragedy of melting toffee, The sordid pathos of stale gingerbread. Ignoble themes! And yet—those haggard faces! Within that little shop. . . . Oh, here I say One does not need to look in lofty places For tragic themes, they're round us every day. And so I saw their agony, their fighting, Their eyes of fear, their heartbreak, their despair; And there the little shop is, black and blighting, And all the world goes by and does not care. They say she sought her old employer's pity, Content to take the pittance he would give. The lame girl? yes, she's working in the city; She coughs a lot—she hasn't long to live. Last night MacBean introduced me to Saxon Dane the Poet. Truly, he is more like a blacksmith than a Bard—a big bearded man whose black eyes brood somberly or flash with sudden fire. We talked of Walt Whitman, and then of others. "The trouble with poetry," he said, "is that it is too exalted. It has a phraseology of its own; it selects themes that are quite outside of ordinary experience. As a medium of expression it fails to reach the great mass of the people." Then he added: "To hell with the great mass of the people! What have they got to do with it? Write to please yourself, as if not a single reader existed. The moment a man begins to be conscious of an audience he is artistically damned. You're not a Poet, I hope?" I meekly assured him I was a mere maker of verse. "Well," said he, "better good verse than middling poetry. And maybe even the humblest of rhymes has its uses. Happiness is happiness, whether it be inspired by a Rossetti sonnet or a ballad by G. R. Sims. Let each one who has something to say, say it in the best way he can, and abide the result. . . . After all," he went on, "what does it matter? We are living in a pygmy day. With Tennyson and Browning the line of great poets passed away, perhaps for ever. The world to-day is full of little minstrels, who echo one another and who pipe away tunefully enough. But with one exception they do not matter." I dared to ask who was his one exception. He answered, "Myself, of course." Here's a bit of light verse which it amused me to write to-day, as I sat in the sun on the terrace of the Closerie de Lilas: |
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