The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Buchanan :: :: University of Virginia Library

Here's a babble
In Vanity Fair!
Here's a rabble
Of folk on the stare!
Here's a crying,
Selling and buying,
Groaning and grumbling,
Pushing and stumbling!
Tootle-te-toot!
Rum-ti-tum-tum!
They blow the flute,
And they beat the drum.
And yonder in rows
Are the painted shows,
Where zany and clown
With ‘Walk in, walk in!’
Stalk up and down,
While the people grin.
Hold me tighter, my pretty one,
We'll elbow our way and see the fun.
In we go, where they scramble and scream—
What a rabble! it's like a dream!

Trip it merrily,
Pretty one,
On we stray cheerily
Full of the fun:
Punch and Judy;
Fiddlestring;
Acrobats moody
Making a ring;
Clowns cutting capers
At every show;
Bucolic gapers
Grinning below;
Quiet conjurers quick and sly
Making the public halfpence fly;
Quacks with boluses, nostrums, and pills,
Vending cures for the flesh and its ills;
Every one bawling—(O the din!)
Every voice calling—‘Walk in, walk in.’

533

‘Stop the thief!’—how they carry the shout!
How the crowd eddies in and out!
Lean and thin with quivering lip
The rascal writhes in his captor's grip:
He looks all round with a hungry stare;
The mob groans round him and longs to tear—
Off to the gaol the scarecrow bear!
We're virtuous people in Vanity Fair!

All together,
Christian and Jew,
Birds of fine feather,
And ragged too,
Dukes and earls,
And ballet girls,
Philosophers,
And patterers;
The poor from the city,
The wild sea-rover,
The beggar witty
Half-seas over,
The gipsy pretty
Red from a romp in the clover.
Right foot, left foot, we trip it and toe it,
You the pretty girl, I your poet,
Rubbing sleeves with great and small,
Jostling along through the heart of them all.
Our hearts are leaping, our heads are dizzy,
The trade's so merry, the mirth so busy,
We sqùeeze along and we gasp for air,
In the hurry and flurry of Vanity Fair.

II.

Clari, my sweetest,
Trimmest and neatest,
Why this alarm?
Why are you sighing,
Fluttering and crying,
And gripping my arm?
‘Come away! come away!
'Tis so sad! 'Tis so loud!
My soul swoons away,
To look at the crowd!
O hark how they cry—
I am sick, let us fly!’
O Clari, sweet blending of fire and of air,
Come along, come along, out of Vanity Fair.
Out yonder are fields and the sky and the trees—
And the only sounds there are the birds and the breeze,
And the water that throbs in its green woodland nest,
Like the heart that is beating so loud in your breast.

. . . Breathless, flushing,
Faint with the crushing,
Here we are—
Night is coming,
Droning and humming
Sounds Vanity Fair afar;
And its light, as the night
Cometh down, is cast bright
On the sky far away . . .
How strange feels this stillness!
Grey and more grey
Comes the night with its chillness.
Clari, where are we? Outside the Fair,
With the great black earth and the sky and the air,
All alone—Hold me tighter! The noise of the rout
Was dreadful within, but more dreadful without
Seems the silence. O God! see the pale moon arise,
And the hills black as ink in the shade, and the eyes
Of the stars fix'd on ours from the terrible skies.

What is this looming
Against the light,
Silent and glooming
In the chilly night?
And what are these clinging,
Three in a row,
Dismally, swinging
When the wind doth blow?
Three black figures against the light,
Their faces white and their legs strapt tight,
Having a swing in the wind this night!
O hold me faster, who is she
That stands at the foot of the cross-shaped tree?
Cowl'd, barefooted, with hooded face,
What doth she in the ghostly place?
Silent she stands, a sad beholder!
Stop, let me touch her on the shoulder.

534

The moon shines cold
On the silent place—
O God, I behold
The dear dead face!
She turns unto me
Calm and white,
Her eyes thrill through me
With piteous light.
How cold yet how sweet
In the night-wind she stands!
See, the poor wounded feet!
See, the poor pleading hands!
Is it she? Kneel and pray! O my child, have no care,
She is near—Hath she fled? Did we dream? Was she there?
Ah, cold is the night, and the earth lieth bare,
And, distant and deep, a dull sound fills the air—
The wash of the waters of Vanity Fair.