English Roses :: :: University of Virginia Library

My dear Grannie, the art that you cherished—
Namely, sucking your eggs the best way,
Seems at length now almost to have perished,
And poor folks hardly know how to play;
We are serious O and mysterious
In our pleasures and business and all,
And we carry our cares when we marry
Through the honeymoon back to the Hall;
We are merry and mad out of season
At the fast and the funeral bell,
While our laughter and tears have no reason
And we choose the wrong partners for treason—
Romping into the Courts and their smell.

We have lost the true manner of living
And rejoice in a furious march,
Our New Woman (the Devil's own giving)
Shuffles out of her stays and the starch;
To run better at least without fetter,
Moulting troublesome morals and modes,
And (like traces and tenderer graces)
Inconvenient collars and codes;
Till our period misses the brightness
Which adorned the pursuits of the past,
And the touch of a delicate lightness
That made absolute order and rightness
Is exchanged for the foolish and fast.

All the dignity now has departed
With the colour and sweetness and glow,
Our delights in their depths heavy-hearted
Seem to surge from abysses below;
For perspective we have the Objective
And no more the blue distance and space,

295

While distortion upsets the proportion
Which for every dear trifle found place;
And, alas! for the fragrance of roses
Shovelled off by more practical tools,
The refinements and dainty reposes,
When our gray Education uncloses
The grim Edens of Boards and their schools.

The new fashions but fetter and skimp us
In honour of cotton and gloom,
And for Heaven we have an Olympus
Swept each day by Society's broom;
God was clearer to you and far dearer
Than he can be to gammon and greed,
When good horses and dirty divorces
Are the points in the popular creed;
Then He was not a form or a fable
And inspired the chief poems and Art,
With the principal seat at the table
Not dethroned for the stye and the stable,
And the flowers grew out of His heart.

My dear Grannie, it's no use protesting,
We must follow the times as they spin—
If they come to the worst, and divesting
Our decent old rags to the skin;
They mean motion in fun and devotion
And parade of fresh fronds and tall shoots,
With the savour of sour fruits in favour—
Though the worn may be gnawing the roots;
It is pace and the boom of sensation
And queer readings of Peter and Paul,
Wild virginity, sexy relation—
And a version revised of the Fall.

That white wonder of exquisite glamour,
The fair woman God fashioned to shine,
Is all drowned in the drum and its clamour
With her human attraction divine;
Ah, the cincture is sold for a tincture
Of a vice to make profligates blush,

296

And nude actions that flout the least fractions
Of fig leaves in their masculine flush;
And a thing that is saucy and sated
With unmaidenly raptures and reels,
Goes a path that is filthy and fated
And in antics that can't be narrated
Shows a pair of unbeautiful heels.

You have told me before you wore mittens
Or had glasses and halted in tread,
And old pussies did not ape their kittens
Nor the young discard butter and bread;
When the glory of earth was a story
That the fool could with reverence read,
And the trouble of life not made double
By the guides whom the gutterlings lead;
You have told me, if now you are cappy
And can walk but on crutches with pain,
People once were true people and happy
And not dull and discursive and flappy
With such feathers and fantasies vain.

And I heard you with interest often
Say that manners were statelier then,
While the women had hearts that would soften
And the world showed magnificent men;
For a quorum was still for decorum
In the wildest excess or abuse,
And propriety kept your society
From the passions that have no excuse;
And they knew the right method of sucking
Any eggs that might fall to their share
Without starving the layers or plucking,
And did not kill the hens for mere clucking
In delight at the blessings they bare.

My dear Grannie, the customs are altered,
For we slay the producers of food
And our makers to market go haltered
At the stupid majority's mood;
In the present we live and it's pleasant

297

While the capital lasts to be gay,
And for verity or our posterity
No one harvests an hour in the day;
So we eat and we drink and we borrow
From the future and mock at the past,
We decline to see danger and sorrow
And the reckoning meant for the morrow—
When the judge adds the figures at last.

And our eggs, which lie all in one basket,
Are now broken of course at both ends—
It's the practice, and few persons mask it—
And no others remain and no friends;
We are greedy and mind not the needy,
Or the stores and the granaries piled
By the toiling of sires in the broiling
At noon, and our wells are defiled.
Who takes thought of the children that follow,
Who provides us the ghost of a plan
To refill the great barns that they hollow,
In their gluttonous fury to swallow
Any loaves, any fishes they can?

You had statesmen and henwives, and plenty
Of the goose that laid nothing but gold;
We have leaders, some but sweet and twenty—
And divided, without a true hold.
It is talking for ever and walking
Up and down with nought usefully done,
And cold merriment from each experiment
By which only worse losses are won.
We have garrulous council and meeting
And the latest impossible board,
But the mistress at home is but fleeting
With perpetual gossip and greeting,
And the master is also abroad.

In your days they were close to our mother
The old earth in their pleasure and toil,
And fine feelings they cared not to smother
Had the healthy sweet scent of the soil;

298

Now it's hurry ungraceful and worry
From the morning and through the whole night
For the capture of some recent rapture
With no ray from distinction or light;
They are sounding the cesspit and gutter
For fresh fancies to jewel their throne,
And while hearing the hiccough and stutter
I could think in the emptiness utter
We were sucking the eggshells alone.

My dear Grannie, to be like the smartest
And the class that most handsomely spends
Soul and body, and still as an artist,
You must eat every egg at both ends;
If you fiddle as well on the middle
And all round you can hardly do wrong,
The more cracking of hearts the less lacking
Of amusements for sinning or song;
So good bye, with best love, my dear Grannie.
Though we soon shall have little but dregs
Of delights, be we ever so canny;
I remain your affectionate Annie,—
With a taste for the sucking of eggs.