THE OLD JIMMY WOODSER

The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar,

Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown,

Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far;

And he glides to the end where the lunch baskets are

And they say that he tipples alone.

His frock-coat is green and the nap is no more,

And the style of his hat is at rest.

He wears the peaked collar our grandfathers wore,

The black-ribboned tie that was legal of yore,

And the coat buttoned over his breast.

When first he came in, for a moment I thought

That my vision or wits were astray;

For a picture and page out of Dickens he brought,

’ Twas an old file dropped in from the Chancery Court

To a wine-vault just over the way.

But I dreamed as he tasted his bitters to-night,

And the lights in the bar-room grew dim,

That the shades of the friends of that other day’ s light,

And of girls that were bright in our grandfathers’ sight,

Lifted shadowy glasses to him.

And I opened the door as the old man passed out,

With his short, shuffling step and bowed head;

And I sighed, for I felt as I turned me about,

An odd sense of respect — born of whisky no doubt —

For the life that was fifty years dead.

And I thought — there are times when our memory trends

Through the future, as’ twere, on its own —

That I, out of date ere my pilgrimage ends,

In a new fashioned bar to dead loves and dead friends

Might drink like the old man alone:

While they whisper,‘ He boozes alone.’