impecunious urchin; lovers mean
Gifts, worship, triumph--Money!
The Golden Apple is the fruit to witch
Our modern Atalantas. To be rich,
Live on life's milk and honey;

"Stir crowds, charm royalties,--these are the things
Psyche most cares for, not her radiant wings
Or Cupid's shy caresses.
She dreams of conquests that a world applauds,
Or a Stage-wardrobe with a thousand gauds,
And half-a-hundred dresses.

"Not so, that other sleeper, stretched at length,
A spectre stripped of charm and shorn of strength,
In yon dismantled chamber.
Dreams she of girlhood's couch, the lavender
Of country sheets, a roof where pigeons whirr
And creamy roses clamber?

"Of him the red-faced swain whose rounded eyes
Dwelt on her charms in moony ecstacies?
Of pride, of shame, of sorrow?
Nay, of what now seems Nature's crowning good;
Hunger-wrought dreams are hers of food--food--food.
She'll wake from them to-morrow;

"Wake fiercely famishing, savagely sick,
The animal in man is quick, so quick
To stir and claim full forage.
Let famine parch the hero's pallid lips,
Pinch Beauty's breast, then watch the swift eclipse
Of virtue, sweetness, courage!

"Cynical? Sense leaves that to callow youth
And callous age; plain picturing of the truth
Seems cynical,--to folly.
Friend, the true cynic is the shallow mime
Who paints humanity devoid of crime,
And life supremely 'jolly,'

"See such an one, in scented sheets a-loll!
Rich fare and rosy wine have lapped his soul
In a _bon-vivant's_ slumbers.
His pen lies there, the ink is scarcely dry
With which he sketched the smug philosophy
Of Cant and Christmas Numbers.

"He dreams of--holly, home, exuberant hearts,
Picturesque poverty, the toys and tarts
Of childhood's hope?--No, verily!
'Tis a dream-world of pleasure, power, and pelf,
Visions of the apocalypse of Self,
O'er which his soul laughs merrily."

"Enough!" I cried. "The morning's earliest gleams
Will soon dissolve this pageantry of dreams.
The New Year's at our portals.
Unselfishness, and purity, and hope,
Dawn with it through the dream-world's cloudy cope,
Even on slumbering mortals."

"Granted," the Shadow answered. "Poppy-Land
Is not _all_ Appetite and Humbug bland.
Myriads of night-capped noddles
We must leave unexplored. Their owners