University of Virginia Library

THE BUMBLEPUPPY.

I look around and see no rival fit
To break with me a lance or dance a measure
Of nudity and manliness, and grind
Beneath our cold conventionalities
With foot perfervid and indignant flight
Of fancy. I am young, I see, I know,
And never, never, never make mistakes;
Infallibility is mine and more,
The privilege of this assured estate,
Prerogative of callow beardlessness—
Modernity of mind. I am amazed
At my own grace and cleverness, I step
Aside from them and gaze and gaze enraptured
Before the wealth of this large littleness,
Which gathers of all times and chimes and cults
And dwells alike in gilded drawing-rooms
Or servants' halls, and equally at home
Romps with the housemaid or dear Duchesses
And steals a kiss from both impartially
With calm instructed ease and gentle might,
And grand indifference to the counter claims
Of pigwash and the thinnest bread and butter—
With educated armed neutrality.
In all the best societies I live,
The fast, the slow, the superfine, the mixed,
The white, the blue, the black, and suck the sweetness
From every one in turn. Adultery
And indiscretions of the softer sort
I love to dabble in, as children play
With dirt and danger; they admit of art
And big broad strokes, virilities, and strength
Restrained, the rich sub-possibilities
That prove the master's hand. I leave to fogeys
And frumps the feeble milk-and-water way.
Give me a canvas that will cover life,
And elbow-room and air; and, if you will,
From hospitals the flowers, and jeweled jests
Of titled dames who to the Conqueror
Ascend, with whiffs and splashes of the gutter
Thrown in to add a colour and a warmth
And raciness of soil and subject; I
Disdain no tool, not even the apprenticeship
Of others not so well equipt, but glad
To work with me to one illustrious end,
And clean my brushes—maids preferred—and share
The hopes and joys of commensality.