undabout,
Some skunk had pouched it: may he pocket it
Red-hot in hell through all eternity!
If I'd that fortune now safe in my kist!
But I was a scatterpenny: and you were bonnie--
Pink as a dog-rose were your plump cheeks then:
Your hair'd the gloss and colour of clean straw:
And when, at darkening, the naphtha flares were kindled,
And all the red and blue and gold aglitter--
Drums banging, trumpets braying, rattles craking;
And we were rushing round and round, the music--
The music and the dazzle ...

ELIZA:
Ay: that was it--
The rushing and the music and the dazzle.
Happen 'twas on a roundabout that Jim
Won Phoebe Martin.

EZRA:
And when you were dizzy,
And all a hazegaze with the hubblyshew;
You cuddled up against me, snug and warm:
And round and round we went--the music braying
And beating in my blood: the gold aglitter ...

ELIZA:
And there's been little dazzle since, or music.

EZRA:
But I was merry, till I fetched you home,
To swarm the house with whinging wammerels.

ELIZA:
You fetched me from my home. If I'd but known
Before I crossed the threshold. I took my arles,
And had to do my darg. And another bride
Comes now. They'll soon be here: the train was due
At half-past one: they'd walk it in two hours,
Though bride and groom.

EZRA:
I wish he'd married Judith.
Cow-eyed, you called the wench; but cows have horns,
And, whiles, they use them when you least expect.
'Twould be no flighty heifer you'd to face,
If she turned mankeen. But, I liked the runt.
Jim might do worse.

ELIZA:
You liked ... But come, I'll set
Your chair outside, where you can feel the sun;
And hearken to the curlew; and be the first
To welcome Jim and Phoebe as man and wife.
Come!

EZRA:
Are the curlew calling?

ELIZA:
Calling? Ay!
And they've been at it all the blessed day,
As on the day I came to Krindlesyke.
Likely the new bride--though 'twasn't at the time
I noticed them: too heedless and new-fangled.
She may be different: she may hear them now:
They're noisy enough.

EZRA:
I cannot catch a note:
I'm getting old, and deaved as well as darkened.
When I was young, I liked to hear the whaups
Calling to one another down the slacks:
And I could whistle, too, like any curlew.
'Twas an ancient bird wouldn't answer my call: and now
I'm ancient myself--an old, blind, dodde