Explore "Spring (Songs in Season)" by Harry Graham on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When the hand of ev'ry Briton, 'spite of glove or woolly mitten, / By the frost severely bitten, grows as frigid as a stone, / When he scuttles like a lizard through the bitter biting blizzard, / Which benumbs his very gizzard and which chills him to the bone; / When the constable stands scowling, where the hurricane is howling, / Or goes miserably prowling, with no shelter from the storm, / And the working-man, half-fuddled, jug to bosom closely cuddled, / In each public-house is huddled, in his efforts to get warm; / Then the poet (known as 'minor') deems it suitable to sing / That there's nothing much diviner than the pleasures of the Spring!
When the maiden, matineeing, from some playhouse portals straying / (Where her favourite is playing), grows as crusty as a crab, / While her fiance ungainly -- so unlike dear Harry Ainley! -- / In the snow is seeking vainly (ah! how vainly! ) for a cab; / When he cusses and she fusses, as they note how full each 'bus is / Of that crowd of oafs and hussies it refuses to disgorge, / Till they hail some passing taxi, with expressions wild and waxy / (Like the language Leo Maxse always uses of Lloyd George)! / With her windswept skirt she battles, to his hat he tries to cling, / While the poet sweetly prattles of the pleasures of the Spring!