Dinner-Time

My mother says with changing days Come just as many changing ways; There’s change in dresses, change in hats And eke in balls and cricket-bats. Even in words the fashions vary; What once was fine, grows ordinary. Such questions trouble not my head, But there’s one thing I really dread! If dinner-time gets so belated That every child on earth is fated To go to bed before it’s ready, How can he keep his courage steady? In Froissart’s time, Kings dined at ten, The morning ten, of course, and when Their subjects called on them at five, They found them only half alive, With nightcaps on, and yawning so That courtiers quick prepared to go. Louis Quatorze, the Monarch Grand, Had matters vastly better planned. At twelve o’clock he dined and wined; As good a time as one could find! Charles Second dined at one, an hour That lasted long as did his power, For when he ceased to dine at all At two they ate in palace-hall. At four o’clock, in Cowper’s days, The meal was served, the poet says, A wretched time, mistake complete; A time to play and not to eat! When Waterloo had come and gone, When gentle Peace ruled Albion, And “Boney” ceased to play his tricks, The dinner-hour was changed to six. With glory fed, the nation well Might thus retard the dinner-bell. Dinner at six for long held sway, But seven’s an hour approved to-day, And mother asks her friends at eight. I hear the doom pronounced by Fate-- Soon will they dine at midnight deep, When every child is wrapped in sleep.