Apollo, mon;
Gang to Jewry for wives and for concubines, lad--look at David and
Solomon.
And it gives an erotico-scriptural twang," said that high-born young
man, "--tickles
The lug" (he meant ear) "of the reader--to throw in a touch of the
Canticles."
So I versified half of The Preacher--it took me a week, working slowly.
Bah!
You don't half know the sex, Bill--they like it. And what if her name
was Aholibah?
I recited her charms, in conjunction with those of a girl at the _cafe_,
In a poem I published in collaboration with Templeton (Taffy).
There are prudes in a world full of envy--and some of them thought it
too strong
To compare an earl's daughter by name with a girl at a French _restaurant_.
I regarded her, though, with the chivalrous eyes of a knight-errant on
quest;
I may say I don't know that I ever felt prouder, old friend, of a conquest.
And when _I_'ve been made happy, I never have cared a brass farthing who
knew it; I
Thank my stars I'm as free from mock-modesty, friend, as from vulgar
fatuity.
I can't say if my spirit retains--for the subject appears to me misty--any
tie
To such associations as Poesy weaves round the records of Christianity.
There are bards--I may be one myself--who delight in their skill to unlock
a lip's
Rosy secrets by kisses and whispers of texts from the charming Apocalypse.
It was thus that I won, by such biblical pills of poetical manna,
From two elders--Sir Seth and Lord Isaac--the liking of Lady Susanna.
But I left her--a woman to me is no more than a match, sir, at tennis is--
When I heard she'd gone off with my valet, and burnt my rhymed version
of Genesis.
You may see by my shortness of speech that my time's almost up: I perceive
That my new-fangled brevity strikes you: but don't--though the public
will--grieve.
As it's sometimes my whim to be vulgar, it's sometimes my whim to be brief;
As when once I observed, after Heine, that "she was a harlot, and I" (which
is true) "was a thief."
(Though you hardly should cite this particular line, by the way, as an
instance of absolute brevity:
I'm aware, man, of that; so you needn't disgrace yourself, sir, by such
grossly mistimed and impertinent levity.)
I don't like to break off, any more than you wish me to stop: but my
fate is
Not to vent half a million such rhymes without blockheads exclaiming--

JAM SATIS.

_Specimen from th