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Mismatch

I'd known them as young love's delight
Back thirty years ago,
When Sam and Esmerelda wed
They'd put on a travelling show,
With clowns and jugglers, acrobats
And a fortune teller's tent,
Perhaps they should have considered the date,
Not staged the show in Lent.

She came from money, but he was poor,
They didn't seem to care,
‘What's mine is yours, ' she'd always say
As she braided up her hair.
They settled down in a country house
Held parties, meets and wakes,
And lived most ostentatiously,
Just one of their many mistakes!

But how they loved! They'd always sigh
To many who came to stay,
‘Sam is the greatest love, ' she said
That a girl could want today! '
‘And Esmy, she is my beating heart,
We're like two halves of the whole! '
For ever they'd wander hand in hand
In the parklands, out for a stroll.

They lived for the country lifestyle,
They would ride to fox and hounds,
But Sam would travel a pace behind
In the old foxhunting grounds,
He wasn't ever as ‘Pukka' to them,
The gentry, so it was said,
That all the old Indian Colonels
Turned away, and cut him dead!

But Esmerelda was more than blind
To the things that tore him up,
For she was quite the belle of the ball
When they raised the stirrup cup,
The men would always defer to her
They loved her, and adored,
While other women detested her,
And Sam was merely bored.

They'd travel to watch the steeplechase,
And Sam would double his bet,
He wasn't a judge of horseflesh, nor
Had fancied a winner yet,
He took out all his frustration there
While Esmy dazzled her friends,
The more he lost, he'd triple the odds
In hopes it would make amends.

Now Esmerelda's Uncle Jack
Was in charge of their receipts,
He kept his eye on her fortune, was
Beginning to scent deceit,
He managed to take his niece aside
And he whispered in her ear:
‘Did you know that your gorgeous husband's
Gone through a hundred thousand clear? '

The tremor that Esmerelda felt
I'll not go into now,
Suffice to say, it showed in her face,
It troubled her darkening brow,
The parties suddenly stopped just then,
The house was still as a tomb,
And Sam had found himself all alone
As he wandered from room to room.

I heard it tell there were voices raised
Went echoing over the park,
Especially when the nights were clear
There were shouts and screams in the dark,
Then a team of builders went right in
To the house, with something to do,
It seems that Esmy showed her love
By cutting the house in two!

Her Uncle Jack was her one support,
‘Don't ever you think of divorce!
The courts will order him half that's left,
As much as he lost on a horse! '
Then Sam attempted to speak to her
As the walls rose up at the back,
She said: ‘If you need to speak to me,
Just talk to my Uncle Jack! '

For going on twenty years they lived
Apart in that same old house,
But never a word was spoken again
By Sam to his love-lost spouse,
And then, on one long winter's night
I saw the flames from the park,
The fire began in the side of Sam,
And spread, unseen in the dark.

Esmerelda was trapped upstairs
Way up on the second floor,
She saw the smoke and began to choke
As she opened the wardrobe door,
She must have known there was no escape
And perhaps, regretted the mess,
For she walked straight out on the balcony,
Was seen in her wedding dress!

The firemen got there far too late,
The house was barely a shell,
The flames had leapt right out of the roof,
The scene was a scene from hell,
I was standing out on my lawn by then,
Just sheltering next to my porch,
When I heard her scream, and call for Sam
As her dress went up like a torch.

I'd known them as young love's delight
Back thirty years ago,
When Sam and Esmerelda wed
They'd put on a travelling show,
With clowns and jugglers, acrobats
And a fortune teller's tent,
Perhaps they should have considered the date,
Not staged the show in Lent!

24 June 2012

poem by David Lewis Paget
Added by Poetry Lover
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