_TO J.M._
Recall, dear John, a certain day
Back in the times of long ago--
A stuffy old estaminet
Under the great peaks fledged with snow;
The Spring that set our hearts rejoicing
As up the serried mountains' bar
We climbed our tortuous way Rolls-Roycing
From Gap to Col Bayard.
Little we dreamed, though that high air
Quickens imagination's flight,
What monstrous bird and very rare
Would in these parts some day alight;
How, like a roc of Arab fable,
A Zepp _en route_ from London town,
Trying to find its German stable,
Would here come blundering down.
The swallows--you remember? yes?--
Northward, just then, were heading straight;
No hint they dropped by which to guess
That other fowl's erratic fate;
An inner sense supplied their vision;
Not one of them contused his scalp
Or lost his feathers in collision
Bumping against an Alp.
But they, the Zepp-birds, flopped and barged
From Lunéville to Valescure
(Where we of old have often charged
The bunkers of the Côte d'Azur);
And half a brace--so strange and far a
Course to the South it had to shape--
Is still expected in Sahara
Or possibly the Cape.
In happier autumns you and I
(You by your art and I by luck)
Have pulled the pheasant off the sky
Or flogged to death the flighting duck;
But never yet--how few the chances
Of pouching so superb a swag--
Have we achieved a feat like France's
Immortal gas-bag bag.