Youth and Art

5Your trade was with sticks and clay,

6 You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished,

7Then laughed "They will see some day,

8 Smith made, and Gibson demolished."

9My business was song, song, song;

10 I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered,

11"Kate Brown's on the boards ere long,

12 And Grisi's existence embittered!"

13I earned no more by a warble

14 Than you by a sketch in plaster;

15You wanted a piece of marble,

16 I needed a music-master.

17We studied hard in our styles,

18 Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,

19For air, looked out on the tiles,

20 For fun, watched each other's windows.

21You lounged, like a boy of the South,

22 Cap and blouse — nay, a bit of beard too;

23Or you got it, rubbing your mouth

24 With fingers the clay adhered to.

25And I — soon managed to find

26 Weak points in the flower-fence facing,

27Was forced to put up a blind

28 And be safe in my corset-lacing.

29No harm! It was not my fault

30 If you never turned your eye's tail up

31As I shook upon Ein alt_,

32 Or ran the chromatic scale up:

33For spring bade the sparrows pair.

34 And the boys and girls gave guesses,

35And stalls in our street looked rare

36 With bulrush and watercresses.

37Why did not you pinch a flower

38 In a pellet of clay and fling it?

39Why did not I put a power

40 Of thanks in a look or sing it?

41I did look, sharp as a lynx,

42 (And yet the memory rankles)

43When models arrived, some minx

44 Tripped up stairs, she and her ankles.

45But I think I gave you as good!

46 "That foreign fellow, — who can know

47How she pays, in a playful mood,

48 For his tuning her that piano?"

49Could you say so, and never say

50 "Suppose we join hands and fortunes,

51And I fetch her from over the way,

52 Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?"

53No, no: you would not be rash,

54 Nor I rasher and something over;

55You've to settle yet Gibson's hash,

56 And Grisi yet lives in clover.

57But you meet the Prince at the Board,

58 I'm queen myself atbals-parés_,

59I've married a rich old lord,

60 And you're dubbed knight and an R.A.

61Each life unfulfilled, you see;

62 It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:

63We have not sighed deep, laughed free,

64 Starved, feasted, despaired, — been happy

65And nobody calls you a dunce,

66 And people suppose me clever;

67This could but have happened once,

68 And we missed it, lost it forever.