This is the last, the very, very last.
Its gay companions, who so snugly lay
Within the corners of their fragile home,
All, all are lightly fled and surely gone;
And their survivor lingers in his pride,
The last of all the matches in the house;
For Mr. Siftings says he has no more,
And Siftings is an honourable man,
And would not state a fact that was not so.
For now he has himself to do without
The flaming boon of matches, having none,
And cannot furnish us as he desires,
Being a grocer and the best of men,
But murmurs vaguely of a future week
When matches shall be numerous again
As leaves in Vallombrosa and as cheap.
Blinks, the tobacconist, he too is spent
With weary waiting in a matchless land;
What Siftings cannot get cannot be got
By men like Blinks, that young tobacconist,
Who tried with all a patriot's fiery zeal
To join the Army, but was sent away
For varicose and too protuberant veins;
And being foiled of all his high intent
Now minds the shop and is a Volunteer,
Drilling on Sundays with the rest of them;
He too, amid his hoards of cigarettes,
Is void of matches as he's full of veins.
So here's a good match in a naughty world,
And what to do with it I do not know,
Save that somehow, when all the place is still,
It shall explode and spurt and flame and burn
Slowly away, not having thus achieved
The lighting of a pipe or any act
Of usefulness, but having spent itself
In lonely grandeur as befits the last
Of all the varied matches I have known.
* * * * *