The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar,Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown,Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far;And he glides to the end where the lunch baskets areAnd they say that he tipples alone.
His frock-coat is green and the nap is no more,And the style of his hat is at rest.He wears the peaked collar our grandfathers wore,The black-ribboned tie that was legal of yore,And the coat buttoned over his breast.
When first he came in, for a moment I thoughtThat my vision or wits were astray;For a picture and page out of Dickens he brought,’Twas an old file dropped in from the Chancery CourtTo a wine-vault just over the way.
But I dreamed as he tasted his bitters to-night,And the lights in the bar-room grew dim,That the shades of the friends of that other day’s light,And of girls that were bright in our grandfathers’ sight,Lifted shadowy glasses to him.
And I opened the door as the old man passed out,With his short, shuffling step and bowed head;And I sighed, for I felt as I turned me about,An odd sense of respect—born of whisky no doubt—For the life that was fifty years dead.
And I thought—there are times when our memory trendsThrough the future, as ’twere, on its own—That I, out of date ere my pilgrimage ends,In a new fashioned bar to dead loves and dead friendsMight drink like the old man alone:While they whisper, ‘He boozes alone.’