WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. To make me write my random rhymes, Ere they be half-forgotten; Nor add and alter, many times, Till all be ripe and rotten. I pledge her, and she comes and dips Her laurel in the wine, And lays it thrice upon my lips, These favour'd lips of mine; I pledge her silent at the board; Her gradual fingers steal And touch upon the master-chord Of all I felt and feel. Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, And phantom hopes assemble; And that child's heart within the man's Begins to move and tremble. 183 Thro' many an hour of summer suns, By many pleasant ways, Like Hezekiah's, backward runs The shadow of my days: The gas-light wavers dimmer; And softly, thro' a vinous mist, My college friendships glimmer. I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men, Who hold their hands to all, and cry For that which all deny themWho sweep the crossings, wet or dry, And all the world go by them. Ah yet, though all the world forsake, Though fortune clip my wings, I will not cramp my heart, nor take Half-views of men and things. Let Whig and Tory stir their blood; Let there be thistles, there are grapes; If old things, there are new; Ten thousand broken lights and shapes, Yet glimpses of the true. Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme, We lack not rhymes and reasons, As on this whirligig of Time We circle with the seasons. This earth is rich in man and maid; With fair horizons bound: This whole wide earth of light and shade Comes out, a perfect round. High over roaring Temple-bar, And, set in Heaven's third story, I look at all things as they are, Head-waiter, honour'd by the guest The pint, you brought me, was the best But though the port surpasses praise, Is there some magic in the place? For since I came to live and learn, Had ever half the power to turn Which bears a season'd brain about, Though soak'd and saturate, out and out, For I am of a numerous house, Where long and largely we carouse As who shall say me nay: Each month, a birth-day coming on, We drink defying trouble, Or sometimes two would meet in one, And then we drank it double; Whether the vintage, yet unkept, Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept, Or stow'd (when classic Canning died) Had cast upon its crusty side The gloom of ten Decembers. The Muse, the jolly Muse, it is! She answer'd to my call, She changes with that mood or this, Is all-in-all to all: She lit the spark within my throat, Used all her fiery will, and smote |