The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar <br />Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown, <br />Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far; <br />So he glides to the end where the lunch baskets are <br />And they say that he tipples alone. <br /> <br />His frockcoat is green and the nap is no more, <br />And his hat is not quite at its best; <br />He wears the peaked collar our grandfathers wore, <br />The black-ribbon tie that was legal of yore, <br />And the coat buttoned over his breast. <br /> <br /> <br />When first he came in, for a moment I thought <br />That my vision or wits were astray; <br />For a picture and page out of Dickens he brought--- <br />‘Twas an old file dropped in from the Chancery Court <br />To the wine-vault just over the way. <br /> <br />But I dreamed, as he tasted his “bitter” to-night <br />And the lights in the bar-room grew dim, <br />That the shades of the friends of that other day’s light, <br />And of girls that were bright in our grandfathers” sight, <br />Lifted shadowy glasses to him. <br /> <br /> <br />Then I opened the door, and the old man passed out, <br />With his short, shuffling step and bowed head; <br />And I sighed; for I felt, as I turned me about, <br />An odd sense of respect---born of whisky no doubt--- <br />For the life that was fifty years dead. <br /> <br /> <br />And I thought---there are times when our memory trends <br />Through the future, as ‘twere on its own--- <br />That I, out-of-date ere my pilgrimage ends, <br />In a new-fashioned bar to dead loves and dead friends <br />Might drink, like the old man, alone. <br /><br /><br />Henry Lawson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-jimmy-woodser/
