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;

Until the charm have power to make
New lifeblood warm the bosom,

And barren commonplaces break

To full and kindly blossom.

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:

I kiss the lips I once have kiss'd;
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 them

Who 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;
There must be stormy weather;

But for some true result of good
All parties work together.

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,

But thro' a kind of glory.

Head-waiter, honour'd by the guest

Half-mused, or reeling-ripe,

The pint, you brought me, was the best
That ever came from pipe.

But though the port surpasses praise,
My nerves have dealt with stiffer.

Is there some magic in the place?
Or do my peptics differ?

For since I came to live and learn,

No pint of white or red

Had ever half the power to turn

This wheel within my head,

Which bears a season'd brain about,

Unsubject to confusion,

Though soak'd and saturate, out and out,

For I am of a numerous house,

With many kinsmen gay,

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,
Had relish fiery-new,

Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept,

As old as Waterloo;

Or stow'd (when classic Canning died) In musty bins and chambers,

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,
To make my blood run quicker,

Used all her fiery will, and smote

Her life into the liquor.