The Season's ended; in the Park the vehicles are far and few, And down the lately-crowded Row one horseman canters on a screw By stacks of unperceptive chairs; the turf is burnt, the leaves are brown, stagnant sultriness prevails--the very air's gone out of town!
Belgravia's drawn her blinds, and let her window-boxes run to seed; Street-urchins play in porticoes--no powdered menial there to heed; Now fainter grows the lumbering roll of luggage-cumbered omnibus: Bayswater's children all are off upon their annual exodus.
On every hoarding posters flaunt the charms of peak, and loch, and sea, To madden those unfortunates who have to stay in town--like me! Gone are the inconsiderate friends who tell one airily, "They're off!" And ask "what _you_ propose to do--yacht, shoot, or fish, or walk, or golf?"
On many a door which opened wide in welcome but the other day, The knocker basks in calm repose--conscious "the family's away." I scan the windows--half in hope I may some friendly face detect-- To meet their blank brown-papered stare, depressing as the cut direct!
I pass the house where She is not, to feel an unfamiliar chill; That door is disenchanted now, that number powerless to thrill! 'Twas there, in yonder balcony, that last July she used to stand; Upon some balcony, more blest, she's leaning now, in Switzerland,
Her eyes upon rose-tinted peaks--but no, of sense I 'm quite bereft! The hour is full early yet, and _table d hôte_ she'll scarce have left. Some happy neighbour's handing her the salad--But I'll move, I think; I see a grim caretaker's eye regard me through the shutter's chink.
Yes, I'll away,--no longer be the sport of sentiment forlorn, But scale the heights of Primrose Hill, pretending it's the Matterhorn; Or hie me through the dusk to sit beside the shimmering Serpentine, And, with a little make-believe, imagine I am up the Rhine.
Alas! the poor device, I know, my restlessness will ne'er assuage: Still Fanny beats, with pinions clipped, the wires of its Cockney cage! No inch of turf to prisoned larks can represent the boundless moor; And neither Hyde nor Regent's Park suggests a Continental Tour!
_The majority of the inside passengers, as usual, sit in solemn silence, and gaze past their opposite neighbours into vacancy. A couple of Matrons converse in wheezy whispers._