Love_Song

Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Furnish’d and burnish’d by Aldershot1 sun, What strenuous singles we played after tea, We in the tournament—you against me! Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy, The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy, With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won, I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn. Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won, The warm-handled racket is back in its press, But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less. Her father’s euonymus2 shines as we walk, And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk, And cool the verandah that welcomes us in To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin. The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath, The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path, As I struggle with double-end evening tie, For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I. On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts, And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports, And westering, questioning settles the sun, On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. The Hillman3 is waiting, the light’s in the hall, The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall, My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair And there on the landing’s the light on your hair. By roads “not adopted,” by woodlanded ways, She drove to the club in the late summer haze, Into nine-o’clock Camberley,4 heavy with bells And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells. Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, I can hear from the car park the dance has begun, Oh! full Surrey5 twilight! importunate band! Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand! Around us are Rovers6 and Austins afar, Above us the intimate roof of the car, And here on my right is the girl of my choice, With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice. And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said, And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead. We sat in the car park till twenty to one And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.