The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch

Excerpt

THE VAGABOND

It was deadly cold in Danbury town
  One terrible night in mid November,
  A night that the Danbury folk remember
For the sleety wind that hammered them down,
That chilled their faces and chapped their skin,
  And froze their fingers and bit their feet,
And made them ice to the heart within,
      And spattered and scattered
      And shattered and battered
Their shivering bodies about the street;
And the fact is most of them didn't roam
In the face of the storm, but stayed at home;
While here and there a policeman, stamping
To keep himself warm or sedately tramping
Hither and thither, paced his beat;
Or peered where out of the blizzard's welter
Some wretched being had crept to shelter,
And now, drenched through by the sleet, a muddled
Blur of a man and his rags, lay huddled.

But one there was who didn't care,
Whatever the furious storm might dare,
A wonderful, hook-nosed bright-eyed fellow
In a thin brown cape and a cap of yellow
That perched on his dripping coal-black hair.
A red scarf set off his throat and bound him,
Crossing his breast, and, winding round him,
      Flapped at his flank
      In a red streak dank;
And his hose were red, with a purple sheen
From his tunic's blue, and his shoes were green.
He was most outlandishly patched together
With ribbons of silk and tags of leather,
And chains of silver and buttons of stone,
And knobs of amber and polished bone,
And a turquoise brooch and a collar of jade,
And a belt and a pouch of rich brocade,
And a gleaming dagger with inlaid blade
And jewelled handle of burnished gold
Rakishly stuck in the red scarf's fold—
A dress, in short, that might suit a wizard
      On a calm warm day
      In the month of May,
But was hardly fit for an autumn blizzard.

Whence had he come there? Who could say,
As he swung through Danbury town that day,
  With a friendly light in his deep-set eyes,
And his free wild gait and his upright bearing,
  And his air that nothing could well surprise,
So bright it was and so bold and daring?
He might have troubled the slothful ease
  Of the Great Mogul in a warlike fever;
He might have bled for the Maccabees,
    Or risen, spurred
    By the Prophet's word,
And swooped on the hosts of the unbeliever.

Whatever his birth and his nomenclature,
  Something he seemed to have, some knowledge
  That never was taught at school or college,
But was part of his very being's nature:
  Some ingrained lore that wanderers show
  As over the earth they come and go,
  Though they hardly know what it is they know.

And so with his head upheld he walked,
  And ever the rain drove down;
And now and again to himself he talked
  In the streets of Danbury town.
And now and again he'd stop and troll
A stave of music that seemed to roll
From the inmost depths of his ardent soul;
But the wind took hold of the notes and tossed them
And the few who chanced to be near him lost them.

So, moving on where his fancy listed,
He came to a street that turned and twisted;
And there by a shop-front dimly lighted
He suddenly stopped as though affrighted,
Stopped and stared with his deep gaze centred
On something seen, like a dream's illusion,
Through the streaming glass, mid the queer confusion
Of objects littered on shelf and floor,
And about the counter and by the door—
And then with his lips set tight he entered....