The Heptalogia | Page 6

a boy."?And all my soul was soothed to hear?That so it was: then startled Joy?Mocked Sorrow with a doubtful tear.?And I was glad as one who sees?For sensual optics things unmeet:?As purity makes passion freeze,?So faith warns science off her beat.?Blessed are they that have not seen,?And yet, not seeing, have believed:?To walk by faith, as preached the Dean,?And not by sight, have I achieved.?Let love, that does not look, believe;?Let knowledge, that believes not, look:?Truth pins her trust on falsehood's sleeve,?While reason blunders by the book.?Then Mrs. Prig addressed me thus;?"Sir, if you'll be advised by me,?You'll leave the blessed babe to us;?It's my belief he wants his tea."

LAST WORDS OF A SEVENTH-RATE POET
Bill, I feel far from quite right--if not further: already the pill Seems, if I may say so, to bubble inside me. A poet's heart, Bill, Is a sort of a thing that is made of the tenderest young bloom on a fruit. You may pass me the mixture at once, if you please--and I'll thank you
to boot?For that poem--and then for the julep. This really is damnable stuff! (Not the poem, of course.) Do you snivel, old friend? well, it's nasty
enough,?But I think I can stand it--I think so--ay, Bill, and I could were it
worse.?But I'll tell you a thing that I can't and I won't. 'Tis the old, old
curse--?The gall of the gold-fruited Eden, the lure of the angels that fell. 'Tis the core of the fruit snake-spotted in the hush of the shadows of
hell,?Where a lost man sits with his head drawn down, and a weight on his eyes. You know what I mean, Bill--the tender and delicate mother of lies, Woman, the devil's first cousin--no doubt by the female side. The breath of her mouth still moves in my hair, and I know that she lied, And I feel her, Bill, sir, inside me--she operates there like a drug. Were it better to live like a beetle, to wear the cast clothes of a slug, Be the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat, Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat? You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of
it clings!?I have lived out my time--I have prigged lots of verse--I have kissed
(ah, that stings!)?Lips that swore I had cribbed every line that I wrote on them--cribbed--
honour bright!?Then I loathed her; but now I forgive her; perhaps after all she was right. Yet I swear it was shameful--unwomanly, Bill, sir--to say that I fibbed. Why, the poems were mine, for I bought them in print. Cribbed? of course
they were cribbed.?Yet I wouldn't say, cribbed from the French--Lady Bathsheba thought it
was vulgar--?But picked up on the banks of the Don, from the lips of a highly
intelligent Bulgar.?I'm aware, Bill, that's out of all metre--I can't help it--I'm none of
your sort?Who set metres, by Jove, above morals--not exactly. They don't go to
Court--?As I mentioned one night to that cowslip-faced pet, Lady Rahab Redrabbit (Whom the Marquis calls Drabby for short). Well, I say, if you want a
thing, grab it--?That's what I did, at least, when I took that _danseuse_ to a swell
_cabaret_,?Where expense was no consideration. A poet, you see, now and then must
be gay.?(I declined to give more, I remember, than fifty centeems to the waiter; For I asked him if that was enough; and the jackanapes answered--
_Peut-être_.?Ah, it isn't in you to draw up a _menu_ such as ours was, though humble: When I told Lady Shoreditch, she thought it a regular _grand tout
ensemble_.)?She danced the heart out of my body--I can see in the glare of the lights, I can see her again as I saw her that evening, in spangles and tights. When I spoke to her first, her eye flashed so, I heard--as I
fancied--the spark whiz?From her eyelid--I said so next day to that jealous old fool of a Marquis. She reminded me, Bill, of a lovely volcano, whose entrails are lava-- Or (you know my _penchant_ for original types) of the upas in Java. In the curve of her sensitive nose was a singular species of dimple, Where the flush was the mark of an angel's creased kiss--if it wasn't
a pimple.?Now I'm none of your bashful John Bulls who don't know a pilau from a
puggaree?Nor a chili, by George, from a chopstick. So, sir, I marched into her
snuggery,?And proposed a light supper by way of a finish. I treated her, Bill, To six _entrées_ of ortolans, sprats, maraschino, and oysters. It made
her quite ill.?Of which moment of sickness I took some advantage. I held her like this, And availed myself, sir, of her sneezing, to shut up her lips with a kiss. The waiters, I saw, were