s of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat,
Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat?
You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of
it clings!
I have lived out my time--I have prigged lots of verse--I have kissed
(ah, that stings!)
Lips that swore I had cribbed every line that I wrote on them--cribbed--
honour bright!
Then I loathed her; but now I forgive her; perhaps after all she was right.
Yet I swear it was shameful--unwomanly, Bill, sir--to say that I fibbed.
Why, the poems were mine, for I bought them in print. Cribbed? of course
they were cribbed.
Yet I wouldn't say, cribbed from the French--Lady Bathsheba thought it
was vulgar--
But picked up on the banks of the Don, from the lips of a highly
intelligent Bulgar.
I'm aware, Bill, that's out of all metre--I can't help it--I'm none of
your sort
Who set metres, by Jove, above morals--not exactly. They don't go to
Court--
As I mentioned one night to that cowslip-faced pet, Lady Rahab Redrabbit
(Whom the Marquis calls Drabby for short). Well, I say, if you want a
thing, grab it--
That's what I did, at least, when I took that _danseuse_ to a swell
_cabaret_,
Where expense was no consideration. A poet, you see, now and then must
be gay.
(I declined to give more, I remember, than fifty centeems to the waiter;
For I asked him if that was enough; and the jackanapes answered--
_Peut-etre_.
Ah, it isn't in you to draw up a _menu_ such as ours was, though humble:
When I told Lady Shoreditch, she thought it a regular _grand tout
ensemble_.)
She danced the heart out of my body--I can see in the glare of the lights,
I can see her again as I saw her that evening, in spangles and tights.
When I spoke to her first, her eye flashed so, I heard--as I
fancied--the spark whiz
From her eyelid--I said so next day to that jealous old fool of a Marquis.
She reminded me, Bill, of a lovely volcano, whose entrails are lava--
Or (you know my _penchant_ for original types) of the upas in Java.
In the curve of her sensitive nose was a singular species of dimple,
Where the flush was the mark of an angel's creased kiss--if it wasn't
a pimple.
Now I'm none of your bashful John Bulls who don't know a pilau from a
puggaree
Nor a chili, by George, from a chopstick. So, sir, I marched into her
snuggery,
And proposed a light supper by way of a finish. I treated her,