Explore "Roses all the Way (Rhymes for the Times)" by Harry Graham on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
['Mr. Frank Lascelles left London yesterday for Calcutta. As he / entered the railway carriage at Victoria, Lady Jane / Kenney-Herbert handed him a basket of roses. ' -- The _Times_.]
Each year in vain I take the train / To Dinard, Trouville or Le Touquet; / No lady fair is ever there / To speed me with a bouquet; / No maiden on my brow imposes / A snood of Gloire de Dijon roses!
No purple phlox adorns the locks / Of scanty hair that fringe my cranium; / No garlands deck my shapely neck / With jasmine or geranium. / I travel, like a social pariah, / Without a single calceolaria!
Though up and down I 'train' to town, / Each day, with fellow-clerk or broker, / No female hand has ever planned / To trim my third-class 'smoker,' / To wreathe the rack with scarlet dahlias, / Or drape the seats with pink azaleas!
Let others envy wealthy men / -- The Rothschilds, Vanderbilts or Cassels -- / I'd much prefer, I must aver, / Like lucky Mr. Lascelles, / To travel well supplied with posies / Of (on the 'Underground') _Tube_-roses!