Bill,
To six _entrees_ of ortolans, sprats, maraschino, and oysters. It made
her quite ill.
Of which moment of sickness I took some advantage. I held her like this,
And availed myself, sir, of her sneezing, to shut up her lips with a kiss.
The waiters, I saw, were quite struck; and I felt, I may say, _entre nous_,
Like Don Juan, Lauzun, Almaviva, Lord Byron, and old Richelieu.
(You'll observe, Bill, that rhyme's quite Parisian; a Londoner, sir,
would have cited old Q.
People tell me the French in my verses recalls that of Jeames or John
Thomas: I
Must maintain it's as good as the average accent of British diplomacy.)
These are moments that thrill the whole spirit with spasms that excite
and exalt.
I stood more than the peer of the great Casanova--you know--de Seingalt.
She was worth, sir, I say it without hesitation, two brace of her sisters.
Ah, why should all honey turn rhubarb--all cherries grow onions--all
kisses leave blisters?
Oh, and why should I ask myself questions? I've heard such before--once
or twice.
Ah, I can't understand it--but, O, I imagine it strikes me as nice.
There's a deity shapes us our ends, sir, rough-hew them, my boy, how
we will--
As I stated myself in a poem I published last year, you know, Bill--
Where I mentioned that that was the question--to be, or, by Jove, not
to be.
Ah, it's something--you'll think so hereafter--to wait on a poet like me.
Had I written no more than those verses on that Countess I used to
call Pussy--
Yes, Minette or Manon--and--you'll hardly believe it--she said they
were all out of Musset.
Now I don't say they weren't--but what then? and I don't say they
were--I'll bet pounds against pennies on
The subject--I wish I may never die Laureate, if some of them weren't
out of Tennyson.
And I think--I don't like to be certain, with Death, so to speak, by
me, frowning--
But I think there were some--say a dozen, perhaps, or a score--out of
Browning.
And--though God knows his poems are not (as all mine are, sir) perfumed
with orris--
Or at least with patchouli--I wouldn't be sworn there were none out of
Morris.
And it's possible--only the legend of Circe is quite an old yarn--old
As the hills--that I might have been thinking, perhaps, of a poem by Arnold
When I sang how Ulysses--Odysseus I mean--would have yearned to dishevel
her
Bright hair with his kisses, and painted myself at her feet--a Strayed