|
Page 51
Confident at first,
Then wondering, then angry, and at last
Indifferent for very hopelessness,
Emilio made the round of London marts
For loud sweet voices, finding everywhere
The same repulse. I heard once of a youth
Whose mother in a craze had pampered him
Into the fond dream he was a great prince
Whose name rang loud upon the people's tongues,
And one day taken from her, sent to school,
He learned, poor lad, how much he was a prince,
In a hard fashion: and I who, something touched
For the poor zany, yet could not but laugh
At the quaint error, thought "And yet why laugh?
We most of us are princes in such guise;
And some of us learn hardly in our school,
'I'm not the prince imperial, after all;
But nobody;' and some who stay at home
May never learn it ... All the happier they."
Emilio learnt it very. bitterly;
Because for him it meant the nighest thing
To starving. Piece by piece the coins clinked out
From the thin purse that held his fortune: so
He must accept his downfall. No prince he
Of opera or concert, with the gift
Out of the fairy tale to mint red gold
By just articulating; but, perhaps,
Some one would hire him for a singing drudge.
And so much grace he gained. But things went ill:
One place his passion lost him, and the next
His carelessness; and once, when he had gained
The vantage ground of a small separate part
That might have helped him higher, he, elate,
Ran riot with some roysterers of his set,
And stood forth flurried with unwonted wine
To be chased off with outcry; so that place
Went too, and with it his last upward hope.
Next ...
|
