EBOOK THE VAGABOND AND OTHER POEMS ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon,
Charles Bidwell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
THE VAGABOND AND OTHER POEMS
FROM _PUNCH_
BY R. C. LEHMANN
Author of "ANNI FUGACES", "CRUMBS OF PITY", and "LIGHT AND SHADE"
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVIII
_Printed in Great Britain by Tumbull & Spears, Edinburgh_
NOTE
All but two of the pieces here printed appeared originally in _Punch_.
My thanks are due to Messrs Bradbury, Agnew & Co., the Proprietors of
_Punch_, for permitting me to reprint them here. "For Wilma" was first
published in _Blackwood's Magazine_, and appears here by the courtesy
of the Editor.
R. C. L.
CONTENTS
THE VAGABOND
SINGING WATER
FOR WILMA
CRAGWELL END
THE BIRD IN THE ROOM
KILLED IN ACTION
EPITAPH
TO FLIGHT-LIEUTENANT ROBINSON, V.C.
PAGAN FANCIES
ROBIN, THE SEA-BOY
THE BIRTHDAY
THE DANCE
PANSIES
THE DRAGON OF WINTER HILL
FLUFFY, A CAT
THE LEAN-TO SHED
THE CONTRACT
JOHN
THE SPARROW
GELERT
AVE, CAESAR!
SOO-TI
THE BATH
PETER, A PEKINESE PUPPY
THE DOGS' WELCOME
ODE TO JOHN BRADBURY
TEETH-SETTING
THE DEATH OF EUCLID
TO POSTUMUS IN OCTOBER
A RAMSHACKLE ROOM
THE LAST STRAW
THE OLD GREY MARE
AT PUTNEY
"A LITTLE BIT OF BLUE"
THE LAST COCK-PHEASANT
IN MEMORIAM
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.
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