University of Virginia Library


16

TO ANY

Thank heaven! the crisis
Of hunger is past;
And you can't guess how nice is
This little breakfast,
Now the thing call'd good living
Is come to at last.
I eat what I love
And recover my strength;
And my jaws only move
As I lie at full length.
I might sit—but I feel
I am better at length.
And I lie so composedly,
Feeding and fed,
A careless beholder
Might fancy me dead:
Not seeing my jaws work
Might fancy me dead.
The grunting and groaning,
The writhing and raving,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible craving
At stomach—that horrible
Stomachic craving.
The sickness, the faintness,
The emptiness-pain,
Have ceased; and my stomach's
A stomach again,

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And feels like a stomach
Not living in vain.
And oh! of all tortures
That torture the worst
Has abated,—the terrible
Torture of thirst
For a napthaline river
Or fusil lake burst:
I'd have drunk dirty water,
For quenching that thirst,
Of a puddle that flows
With a smell and no sound
From a hole but a very few
Feet underground,
Though I holded my nose
As I stoop'd to the ground.
And ah! let it never
Be foolishly said
That this my mahogany
Is not well spread:
With such victual before me
I call it a spread;
And such drink—my cosmogony
Knows nought instead.
My tantalized spirit
Here blandly reposes:
The upsetting or ever
'Twas wetting one's nose is
All over. Sweet spirit!
Thy scent in my nose is.

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And now while so pleasantly
Curl'd up it fancies
A fragranter odour
Than rue has, or pansies,
Or even than rosemary
Mingled with pansies,
The beautiful bourbon
The Puritan fancies.
And so I lie happily,
Drinking a many
And eating a few.
It will cost a big penny.
I don't mind the cost:
For I have not a penny.