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!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[cynthiabuhainbaello]

I posted a comment on this poem in another site but I will again comment because you are really an excellent poet. The narrative is engaging and remarkably well-crafted, with conflict and intrigue woven in it so brilliantly. As a reader, I like poems like these that have a story to tell complete with the characters' emotions laid out in vivid scenes. I hope those who comment will stick to the qualities of the poem here and not on the reviews we make. You deserve no less, David.

[EmpressPoetess]

No winners in this one. Makes you really think about what's important in life: wealth for happiness sake or love for love's sake. Very interesting story/poem. Thank you David, I really enjoyed reading this!

Dee

[Emerald Seas]

Has me thinking of an old world version of "War of the Roses". What do they say? All is fair in love and war... terrible tragedy none the less.

[Marie]

Another wonderful story. I hoped to the last that Esmerelda would be saved and reunited with Same. But not all lovers' tales can have happy endings.