Walking-coat from tail to throat is
    Frayed and greened—
Like a man whose other coat is
    Being cleaned;
Gone for ever round the edging
    Past repair—
Waistcoat pockets frayed with dredging
    After ‘sprats’ no longer there.

Wearing summer boots in June, or
    Slippers worn and old—
Like a man whose other shoon are
    Getting soled.
Pants? They’re far from being recent—
    But, perhaps, I’d better not—
Says they are the only decent
    Pair he’s got.

And his hat, I am afraid, is
    Troubling him—
Past all lifting to the ladies
    By the brim.
But, although he’d hardly strike a
    Girl, would Dan,
Yet he wears his wreckage like a
    Gentleman!

Once—no matter how the rest dressed—
    Up or down—
Once, they say, he was the best-dressed
    Man in town.
Must have been before I knew him—
    Now you’d scarcely care to meet
And be noticed talking to him
    In the street.

Drink the cause, and dissipation,
    That is clear—
Maybe friend or kind relation
    Cause of beer.
And the talking fool, who never
    Reads or thinks,
Says, from hearsay: ‘Yes, he’s clever;
    But, you know, he drinks.’

Been an actor and a writer—
    Doesn’t whine—
Reckoned now the best reciter
    In his line.
Takes the stage at times, and fills it—
    ‘Princess May’ or ‘Waterloo’.
Raise a sneer!—his first line kills it,
    ‘Brings ’em’, too.

Where he lives, or how, or wherefore
    No one knows;
Lost his real friends, and therefore
    Lost his foes.
Had, no doubt, his own romances—
    Met his fate;
Tortured, doubtless, by the chances
    And the luck that comes too late.

Now and then his boots are polished,
    Collar clean,
And the worst grease stains abolished
    By ammonia or benzine:
Hints of some attempt to shove him
    From the taps,
Or of someone left to love him—
    Sister, p’r’aps.

After all, he is a grafter,
    Earns his cheer—
Keeps the room in roars of laughter
    When he gets outside a beer.
Yarns that would fall flat from others
    He can tell;
How he spent his ‘stuff’, my brothers,
    You know well.

Manner puts a man in mind of
    Old club balls and evening dress,
Ugly with a handsome kind of
    Ugliness.

One of those we say of often,
    While hearts swell,
Standing sadly by the coffin:
    ‘He looks well.’

We may be—so goes a rumour—
    Bad as Dan;
But we may not have the humour
    Of the man;
Nor the sight—well, deem it blindness,
    As the general public do—
And the love of human kindness,
    Or the grit to see it through!