foot,
I drew the strings about its waist;
Pink as the unshell'd inner fruit,
But barely decent, hardly chaste,
Its nudity had startled me;
But when the petticoats were on,
"I know," I said; "its name shall be
Paul Cyril Athanasius John."
"Why," said my wife, "the child's a girl."
My brain swooned, sick with failing sense;
With all perception in a whirl,
How could I tell the difference?
"Nay," smiled the nurse, "the child's a boy."
And all my soul was soothed to hear
That so it was: then startled Joy
Mocked Sorrow with a doubtful tear.
And I was glad as one who sees
For sensual optics things unmeet:
As purity makes passion freeze,
So faith warns science off her beat.
Blessed are they that have not seen,
And yet, not seeing, have believed:
To walk by faith, as preached the Dean,
And not by sight, have I achieved.
Let love, that does not look, believe;
Let knowledge, that believes not, look:
Truth pins her trust on falsehood's sleeve,
While reason blunders by the book.
Then Mrs. Prig addressed me thus;
"Sir, if you'll be advised by me,
You'll leave the blessed babe to us;
It's my belief he wants his tea."

* * * * *

LAST WORDS OF A SEVENTH-RATE POET

Bill, I feel far from quite right--if not further: already the pill
Seems, if I may say so, to bubble inside me. A poet's heart, Bill,
Is a sort of a thing that is made of the tenderest young bloom on a fruit.
You may pass me the mixture at once, if you please--and I'll thank you
to boot
For that poem--and then for the julep. This really is damnable stuff!
(Not the poem, of course.) Do you snivel, old friend? well, it's nasty
enough,
But I think I can stand it--I think so--ay, Bill, and I could were it
worse.
But I'll tell you a thing that I can't and I won't. 'Tis the old, old
curse--
The gall of the gold-fruited Eden, the lure of the angels that fell.
'Tis the core of the fruit snake-spotted in the hush of the shadows of
hell,
Where a lost man sits with his head drawn down, and a weight on his eyes.
You know what I mean, Bill--the tender and delicate mother of lies,
Woman, the devil's first cousin--no doubt by the female side.
The breath of her mouth still moves in my hair, and I know that she lied,
And I feel her, Bill, sir, inside me--she operates there like a drug.
Were it better to live like a beetle, to wear the cast clothes of a slug,
Be the louse in the lock