University of Virginia Library

I

(BACK-ROOM AT PORTER'S—DICK, SOLUS.)
I am not well to-night—methinks the fumes
Of overheated punch have something dimmed
The cerebellum or pineal gland,
Or where the soul sits regent. Strange that things
Born of the grosser elements of earth
Should cloud the mind's own heaven with fantasies!
I am no baby—look upon that leg
All laced with steely sinews—see that arm,
Embossed with swelling muscle—and this shape
Of nature's best expansion—were they made
But to be sneered at by the grinning imps
That leave the dotard's slumbers visionless,
To play their antics in the teeth of manhood?
(Fellow, another measure of your compound,
And be less liberal of your aqueous tincture.)
A man who hath been elbowed out of office,
A poet who hath sown some score of verses,
And reaped one sorry sentence of damnation,
Look down i' the mouth, and feel unutterably—
But one who is not plagued with corporal evils,
Who feels not hungry, save at dinner time,
And is not snarled at by the world about him,
Can do but little, save to fume and fret
At air-born hydras of imagination.
And yet, in these same most degenerate days,
There be some things that do much gall a man
(Looking at his boots.)
Methinks the polish of these nether casings
Is not so radiant as it was of old—
Perhaps the varlet who doth give them lustre
Hath ta'en to reading of philosophy,
For learning has of late put off her wings,
And creeps along with beggars in the dust.—
Why, I have seen a kitchen-nurtured wench,
With feet that seemed like mountain pedestals,
And fingers redder than the peony,
Who tripped so daintily upon the earth,
As she were stepping on Elysian flowers;
And did so dally with the household stuff,
As if a saucepan were an instrument
Fit for the music of angelic choirs.
She'd quote you loving ditties by the hour,
And scribble verses in your Sunday bible,
And talk to you of starlight, and of flowers,
And mind, and metaphysics. Out upon them—
I'd rather have a Patagonian savage,
One that can grapple with the mountain bear,
And eat him as a Christian eats a chicken,
Than such a mincing thing to wait upon me.
Fellow, here's money for thine aliments,
I must away.
(Exit.)