PRESENCES

Despise the garish presences that flaunt

The obvious possession of today,

To wear with me the spectacles that haunt

The optic sense with wraiths of yesterday —

These cobbled shores through which the traffic streams

Have been the stage-set of successive towns,

Where coffined actors postured out their dreams,

And harlot Folly changed her thousand gowns.

This corner-shop was Bull's Head Tavern,

When names now dead on marble lived in clay;

Its rooms were like a sanded cavern,

Where candles made a sallow jest of day,

And drovers’ boots came grinding like a quern,

While merchants drank their steaming cups of “tay.”

Here pock-marked Black Beard covenanted Bonnet

To slit the Dons’ throats at St. Augustine,

And bussed light ladies, unknown to this sonnet,

Whose names, no doubt, would rime with Magdalene.

And English parsons, who had lost their fames,

Sat tippling wine as spicy as their joke,

Larding bald texts with bets on cocking mains,

And whiffing pipes churchwardens used to smoke.

Here macaronis, hands a-droop with laces,

Dealt knave to knave in picquet or écarté,

In coats no whit less scarlet than their faces,

While bullies hiccuped healths to King and Party,

And Yankee slavers, in from Barbadoes,

Drove flinty bargains with keen Huguenots.

Then Meeting Street first knew St. Michael's steeple,

When redcoats marched with royal drums a-banging,

Or merchants stopped gowned tutors to inquire

Why school let out to see a pirate hanging;

And gentlemen took supper in the street,

When candle-shine from tables guled the dark,

While others passing by would be discreet

And take the farther side without remark,

Pausing perhaps to snuff the balmy savor

Of turtle-soup mulled with the bay-leaves’ flavor:

These walls beheld them, and these lingering trees

That still preempt the middle of the gutter;

They are the backdrops for old comedies —

If leaves were tongues — what stories they might utter!