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111
PARODY.
[To starve, or not to starve? that is the question:—]
[_]
—“My occupation is no more!” exclaimed Sylvester Daggerwood, on assuming the vile occupation of waiter at a country inn, where, on contemplating the preparations for a parish feast, he made the following complaint.
To starve, or not to starve? that is the question:—
Whether, Sylvester, thou should'st calmly bear
The yearns and gripings of internal wants,
Or take up arms against the parish treat,
And, wille nille, end it?—To eat;—to glut
Thy fill;—and, by this feast, to say thou end'st
Those cravings and the thousand rav'nous wants
That flesh is heir to—'tis an occupation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To eat;—to stuff;—
To gorge, perchance be sick! aye, there's the rub;
For in that yearning state what pangs may come,
In easing me of superfluities,
Must make me pause:—'tis this alone
That bids me curb my longing appetite:
Else should I tamely bear fell hunger's cries,
My stomach's wrongs, my bowels' piercing shrieks,
My greedy eye's desire, the cook's delay,
Who, insolent in office, jade-like taunts
My rav'nous appetite, that sneaking waits,
When quickly force might satisfy desire
With knife and bodkin? What all endure,
And grumbling sweat before the blazing fire,
But that the dread of sickness afterwards,
That painful operation, from whose course
No man is free, affrights my will,
And makes me rather bear those gripes I feel,
Than fly to such as might await the deed?
Thus sickness does make cowards of us all;
And thus fell resolution, arm'd by want,
Sinks, pale and coward-like, the slave of thought;
And mighty feats perform'd with knife and fork
Are left untried: so is my craving turn'd!
I lose the power of eating.—
Whether, Sylvester, thou should'st calmly bear
The yearns and gripings of internal wants,
Or take up arms against the parish treat,
And, wille nille, end it?—To eat;—to glut
Thy fill;—and, by this feast, to say thou end'st
Those cravings and the thousand rav'nous wants
That flesh is heir to—'tis an occupation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To eat;—to stuff;—
To gorge, perchance be sick! aye, there's the rub;
For in that yearning state what pangs may come,
In easing me of superfluities,
112
That bids me curb my longing appetite:
Else should I tamely bear fell hunger's cries,
My stomach's wrongs, my bowels' piercing shrieks,
My greedy eye's desire, the cook's delay,
Who, insolent in office, jade-like taunts
My rav'nous appetite, that sneaking waits,
When quickly force might satisfy desire
With knife and bodkin? What all endure,
And grumbling sweat before the blazing fire,
But that the dread of sickness afterwards,
That painful operation, from whose course
No man is free, affrights my will,
And makes me rather bear those gripes I feel,
Than fly to such as might await the deed?
Thus sickness does make cowards of us all;
And thus fell resolution, arm'd by want,
Sinks, pale and coward-like, the slave of thought;
And mighty feats perform'd with knife and fork
Are left untried: so is my craving turn'd!
I lose the power of eating.—
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