POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
Lee, of Kentucky, with his Pan's bold eyes,
And Neville Denzil Whyte.
"Petite Marmotte,” and "Drôle," and "Bon Sujet,"—
He's handy with his phrase,
The while he masks his horror at a misapplied
Sauce Béarnaise.
He supervises with a noble air
The ignorant's menu:
The little mademoiselle from Maine?—"Mais oui,
Red wine and pot-au-feu."
Some twenty years ago he boiled the mash
For pigs, in rough Savoy,
Crumbling the black bread from his hairy hand—
A peasant boy.
Belloy, that Beaux-Arts chap who dines alone,
Saw once the ancestral stock,
The father of Eugene, glued to the soil
As lichen to its rock.
Eugene had bought him with his hoarded sous
The Auberge d'Or at Gex;
The old man to his neghbors brags of 'Gene,
Their simple souls to vex—
How since he took the Grand' route years agone,
A lord he is become, "Englees he spig."
So saying, flourishes in their awed faces,
His broom of twig.
[190]
