’Twas bought in Bruges, the shop was poor,
One read “Au Bébé” flourished o’er
The ancient lintel; to that door
No English guinea
Had ever come nor travelled gold
Gladdened her gaze, that woman old,
Who tottered from the gloom and sold
The Belgian “pinny.”
I mind me choosing in the place
A cap with frills of little lace;
“That too,” I said, “shall come to grace
My Small and Sweet.”
Prim in her pinafore arrayed
I pictured Betsey while I strayed
Where, all the time, the proud bells played
Above the street.
Now, Betsey, on the roguish back
That stalks around the sunny stack
The turkey’s truculence or the track
Of stable cats
The Belgian “pinny” flaunts its hue,
Still the same stripe of white and blue
As when ’twas dyed, no doubt for you,
In Flemish vats.
Still of its old lost life it tells
And alien provenance, there are spells
And glamour of the Town of Bells
About it shed;
And when my Belgian Betsey climbs
My knee I’ve heard a hundred times
The clash and ripple of the chimes
Around her head.
As though the child herself did play
Without some white estaminet
Shuttered and silent where, all day
In sun and shower,
Two little lions with stone grins
Hold ’scutcheons under paws and chins
And their divine appellant dins
The honoured hour.