I called for trumps, and called in vain,
    At intervals I dared to mention
  How much her conduct caused me pain,
    Yet paid she not the least attention. 
  I very nearly tore my hair,
    I begged of her to play discreetly,
  But no—­the tricks I planned with care
    Without exception failed completely.

  Jewels, I have no doubt, are grand,
    But even they are sometimes cloying. 
  I found at length her splendid hand
    (Of shapely fingers) most annoying. 
  When next I’m playing, I confess
    I’d like a girl (and may I get her!)
  Who shows her hands a little less,
    And plays her cards a little better.

* * * * *

A LAY OF LONDON.

[Illustration]

  Oh, London is a pleasant place to live the whole year through,
  I love it ’neath November’s pall, or Summer’s rarest blue,
  When leafy planes to city courts still tell the tale of June,
  Or when the homely fog brings out the lamplighter at noon.

  I thought to go away this year, and yet in town I am. 
  I have not been to Hampstead Heath, much less to Amsterdam;
  And now December’s here again I do not feel the loss,
  Though all the summer I’ve not been four miles from Charing Cross.

  ’Twas pleasant in the office when we’d gather in a bunch,
  A social, dreamy sort of day, with lots of time for lunch. 
  How commerce flagged September through, at 90, Pinching Lane,
  Till bronzed and bluff the chief returned, and trade revived again.

  Why talk of Andalusia’s bulls, of Rocky-Mountain bears,
  Of Tyrolean alpenstocks—­though not of Alpen shares;
  Of seaside haunts where fashion drives with coronetted panels,
  Or briny nooks, when all you need is pipes, and books, and flannels.

  Of orange-groves, and cloister’d courts, of fountains, and of pines,
  Black shadows at whose edge the sun intolerably shines,
  Of tumbled mountain heights, like waves on some Titanic sea,
  Caught by an age of ice at once, and fix’d eternally.

  Of quiet river-villages, which woods and waters frame,
  Lull’d in the lap of loveliness to the music of their name;
  Of fallow-fields, of sheltered farms, of moorland and of mere: 
  Let others roam—­I stay at home, and find their beauties here.

  Not when the sun on London town incongruously smiles,
  On the news-boys, and the traffic, and the advertisers’ wiles;
  But when the solar orb has ceased to mark the flight of time,
  And three yards off is nothingness—­indefinite, sublime,—­

  Then in the City’s teeming streets each soul can get its share,
  Its concentrated essence of the high romance of air,
  Whose cloudy symbols KEATS beheld, and yearn’d to jot them down,
  But anybody nowadays can swallow them in town.

  There are, who, fain to dry the tear, and soothe the choking throat,
  Would burn those tokens of the hearth that fondly o’er us float;
  They cannot trace amid the gloom each dainty spire and whorl,
  But smoke, to the true poet’s eye, is never out of curl.