REMINISCENCES OF A DANCING MAN

Who now remembers Almack's balls -

Willis's sometime named -

In those two smooth-floored upper halls

For faded ones so famed?

Where as we trod to trilling sound

The fancied phantoms stood around,

Or joined us in the maze,

Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years,

Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers,

The fairest of former days.

Who now remembers gay Cremorne,

And all its jaunty jills,

And those wild whirling figures born

Of Jullien's grand quadrilles?

With hats on head and morning coats

There footed to his prancing notes

Our partner-girls and we;

And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked,

And the platform throbbed as with arms enlinked

We moved to the minstrelsy.

Who now recalls those crowded rooms

Of old yclept “The Argyle,”

Where to the deep Drum-polka's booms

We hopped in standard style?

Whither have danced those damsels now!

Is Death the partner who doth moue

Their wormy chaps and bare?

Do their spectres spin like sparks within

The smoky halls of the Prince of Sin

To a thunderous Jullien air?