Classic Poem

You never know! as the gossips say,
You never know!
Thus it fell on a day
In summer last I chanced to be
On a tram-car of the L.C.C. —
Stifling it was, and the folk therein
Good honest folk enough no doubt,
Yet hardly such as from eyes might win
Attention — just the mid-day rout
Of office girls and housewives stout
A-marketing — with a man or two
Listless and tired, as I, to view.
Suddenly,
The car stops, up the gangway strides
A stalwart young Father with Son on arm,
To keep him safe from the traffic's harm —
Well, at a guess say a child of three —
And down they sit, the luck of it!
Down together afront of me.
Then a fig for the heat, and hustle, and noise
Through the rest of the way, as I gazed on the Boy's
Perfection amazing of colour and limb
And movement, that wholly befitted him,
As he lolled on his Father's lap at play,
Shall we say —
For the hand of the faultless Urbinate
A new Madonna and Child to create?
Ah! Raphael, heavens! had you been there
To capture the Boy with your silver-point,
And anon to set the world a-stare
And your name re-bless
For so fair a fresh vision of graciousness!
You never know! as the gossips say,
You never know!
An inn-stable, was it not? long ago
Sheltered The Eternal newly-born —
Shepherd and sage they found it so —
On the first Christmas Morn.
Yes,
You never know what common-place,
Sheer common-place,
Of Life's strange chances shall hap to reveal
The unexpected face
Of a Truth or a Beauty its mists conceal —
Suddenly!
Ah! you never know!