Reveller.
As for poets who go on a contrary tack to what I go and you go--
You remember my lyrics _translated_--like "sweet bully Bottom"--from Hugo?
Though I will say it's curious that simply on just that account there
should be
Men so bold as to say that not one of my poems was written by me.
It would stir the political bile or the physical spleen of a drab or a Tory
To hear critics disputing my claim to Empedocles, Maud, and the Laboratory.
Yes, it's singular--nay, I can't think of a parallel (ain't it a high lark?
As that Countess would say)--there are few men believe it was I wrote the
Ode to a Skylark.
And it often has given myself and Lord Albert no end of diversion
To hear fellows maintain to my face it was Wordsworth who wrote the
Excursion,
When they know that whole reams of the verses recur in my authorized works
Here and there, up and down! Why, such readers are infidels--heretics--
Turks.
And the pitiful critics who think in their paltry presumption to pay me a
Pretty compliment, pairing me off, sir, with Keats--as if _he_ could
write Lamia!
While I never produced a more characteristic and exquisite book,
One that gave me more real satisfaction, than did, on the whole, Lalla
Rookh.
Was it there that I called on all debtors, being pestered myself by a
creditor, (he
Isn't paid yet) to rise, by the proud appellation of bondsmen--hereditary?
Yes--I think so. And yet, on my word, I can't think why I think it was so.
It more probably was in the poem I made a few seasons ago
On that Duchess--her name now? ah, thus one outlives a whole cycle of joys!
Fair supplants black and brown succeeds golden. The poem made rather a
noise.
And indeed I have seen worse verses; but as for the woman, my friend--
Though his neck had been never so stiff, she'd have made a philosopher
bend.
As the broken heart of a sunset that bleeds pure purple and gold
In the shudder and swoon of the sickness of colour, the agonies old
That engirdle the brows of the day when he sinks with a spasm into rest
And the splash of his kingly blood is dashed on the skirts of the west,
Even such was my own, when I felt how much sharper than any snake's tooth
Was the passion that made me mistake Lady Eve for her niece Lady Ruth.
The whole world, colourless, lapsed. Earth fled from my feet like a dream,
And the whirl of the walls of Space was about me, and moved as a stream
Flowing and ebbing and flowing all night t