A monocle he always wears...

A monocle he always wears,

Safe screwed within his dexter eye;

His mouth stands open wide, and snares

The too intrusive fly.

Were he to close his jaws, no doubt,

The eyeglass would at once fall out.

His choice of clothes is truly weird;

His jacket, short, and negligee,

Is slit behind, as tho’ he feared

A tail might sprout some day.

One's eye must be inured to shocks

To stand the tartan of his socks.

The chessboard pattern of his check

Betrays its owner's florid taste;

A three-inch collar grips his neck,

A cummerbund his waist;

The trousers that his legs enshroud

Speak for themselves, they are so loud.

His shirt, his sleeve-links and his stud,

Are all of a cerulean hue,

And advertise that Norman blood,—

The bluest of the blue,—

Which, as a brief inspection shows,

Seems to have centred in his nose.

His saffron tresses, oiled with care,

Back from a vacant brow he scrapes;

From so compact a head of hair

No filament escapes.

( This surface-polish, friends complain,

Does not descend into the brain. )

What does he do? You well may ask.

Nothing at all, to be exact!

Yet he performs this tedious task

With quite consummate tact.

( No cause for wonder this, in truth,

Since he has practised it from youth. )

To some wide window-seat he goes,

And gazes out with torpid eyes;

Then yawns politely through his nose,

Looks at his watch, and sighs;

Regards his boots with dumb regret,

And lights another cigarette.

Then glances through his morning's mail,

And now, his daily labours done,

Feels far too comatose and frail

To give the dog a run;

Besides, as he reflects with shame,

He can n't recall the creature's name!

Safe in a front-row stall he sits,

Where lyric comedy is played;

And, after, to some local Ritz,

Escorts a chorus-maid.

The jeunesse doree of to-day

Is called the jeunesse stage-dooree!

How slow the weary days must seem

( That to his fellows fly so fast ),

To one who in a waking-dream

Awaits the next repast!

How tiresome and how long they feel,

Those hours dividing meal from meal!

For, like Othello, he must find

His “occupation gone,” poor soul,

Who can but wander in his mind

When he requires a stroll;

A mental sphere, one may surmise,

Too cramped for healthy exercise.

But since a poet has declared

That “nothing walks with aimless feet,”

To ask why such a type is spared

To grace the public street,

Would be most curiously misplaced,

And in the very worst of taste.