Fashion on fashion on fashion, <br />(With only the truth growing old!) <br />And here's the new purple of passion, <br />(And love waiting out in the cold) <br />Who'll buy? <br /> <br />They are crying new lamps for Aladdin, <br />New worlds for the old and the true; <br />And no one remembers the story <br />_The magic was not in the new._ <br /> <br />They are crying a new rose for Eden, <br />A rose of green glass. I suppose <br />The only thing wrong with their rose is <br />The fact that it isn't a rose. <br />Who'll buy? <br /> <br />And here is a song without metre; <br />And, here again, nothing is wrong; <br />(For nothing on earth could be neater) <br />Except that--it isn't a song. <br /> <br />Well. Walk on your hands. It's the latest! <br />And feet are Victorian now; <br />And even our best and our greatest <br />Before that dread epithet bow. <br />Who'll buy? <br /> <br />The furniture goes for a song, now. <br />The sixties had horrible taste. <br />But the trouble is this--they've included <br />Some better things, too, in their haste. <br /> <br />Were they wrapped in the antimacassars, <br />Or sunk in a sofa of plush? <br />Did an Angelican bishop forget them, <br />And leave them behind in the crush? <br />Who'll buy? <br /> <br />Here's a turnex. It's going quite cheaply. <br />(It lived with stuffed birds in the hall! <br />And, of course, to a mind that thinks deeply <br />That settles it, once and for all.) <br /> <br />Here's _item_, a ring (very plain, sirs!), <br />And _item_, a God (but He's dead!); <br />They say we shall need Him again, sirs, <br />So--_item_, a cross for His head. <br />Who'll buy? <br /> <br />Yes, you'll need it again, though He's dead, sirs. <br />It is only the fashions that fly. <br />So here are the thorns for His head, sirs. <br />They'll keep till you need 'em. Who'll buy?<br /><br />Alfred Noyes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fashions/
