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Mrs. Katherine’€™s Lantern

‘Coming from a gloomy court,
Place of Israelite resort,
This old lamp I’ve brought with me.
Madam, on its panes you’ll see
The initials K and E.’
 
‘An old lantern brought to me?
Ugly, dingy, battered, black!’
(Here a lady I suppose
Turning up a pretty nose)'€”
‘Pray, sir, take the old thing back.
I’ve no taste for bricabrac.’
 
‘Please to mark the letters twain’€”
(I’m supposed to speak again)'€”
‘Graven on the lantern pane.
Can you tell me who was she,
Mistress of the flowery wreath,
And the anagram beneath’€”
The mysterious K E?
 
‘Full a hundred years are gone
Since the little beacon shone
From a Venice balcony:
There, on summer nights, it hung,
And her Lovers came and sung
To their beautiful K E.
 
’Hush! in the canal below
Don’t you hear the plash of oars
Underneath the lantern’s glow,
And a thrilling voice begins
To the sound of mandolins?
Begins singing of amore
And delire and dolore’€”
O the ravishing tenore!
 
‘Lady, do you know the tune?
Ah, we all of us have hummed it!
I’ve an old guitar has thrummed it,
Under many a changing moon.
Shall I try it? Do Re MI . .
What is this? Ma foi, the fact is,
That my hand is out of practice,
And my poor old fiddle cracked is,
And a man’€”I let the truth out,'€”
Who’s had almost every tooth out,
Cannot sing as once he sung,
When he was young as you are young,
When he was young and lutes were strung,
And love-lamps in the casement hung.’
Other works by William Makepeace Thackeray...



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