The Heptalogia | Page 7

quite struck; and I felt, I may say, _entre nous_, Like Don Juan, Lauzun, Almaviva, Lord Byron, and old Richelieu. (You'll observe, Bill, that rhyme's quite Parisian; a Londoner, sir,
would have cited old Q.?People tell me the French in my verses recalls that of Jeames or John
Thomas: I?Must maintain it's as good as the average accent of British diplomacy.) These are moments that thrill the whole spirit with spasms that excite
and exalt.?I stood more than the peer of the great Casanova--you know--de Seingalt. She was worth, sir, I say it without hesitation, two brace of her sisters. Ah, why should all honey turn rhubarb--all cherries grow onions--all
kisses leave blisters??Oh, and why should I ask myself questions? I've heard such before--once
or twice.?Ah, I can't understand it--but, O, I imagine it strikes me as nice. There's a deity shapes us our ends, sir, rough-hew them, my boy, how
we will--?As I stated myself in a poem I published last year, you know, Bill-- Where I mentioned that that was the question--to be, or, by Jove, not
to be.?Ah, it's something--you'll think so hereafter--to wait on a poet like me. Had I written no more than those verses on that Countess I used to
call Pussy--?Yes, Minette or Manon--and--you'll hardly believe it--she said they
were all out of Musset.?Now I don't say they weren't--but what then? and I don't say they
were--I'll bet pounds against pennies on?The subject--I wish I may never die Laureate, if some of them weren't
out of Tennyson.?And I think--I don't like to be certain, with Death, so to speak, by
me, frowning--?But I think there were some--say a dozen, perhaps, or a score--out of
Browning.?And--though God knows his poems are not (as all mine are, sir) perfumed
with orris--?Or at least with patchouli--I wouldn't be sworn there were none out of
Morris.?And it's possible--only the legend of Circe is quite an old yarn--old As the hills--that I might have been thinking, perhaps, of a poem by Arnold When I sang how Ulysses--Odysseus I mean--would have yearned to dishevel
her?Bright hair with his kisses, and painted myself at her feet--a Strayed
Reveller.?As for poets who go on a contrary tack to what I go and you go-- You remember my lyrics _translated_--like "sweet bully Bottom"--from Hugo? Though I will say it's curious that simply on just that account there
should be?Men so bold as to say that not one of my poems was written by me. It would stir the political bile or the physical spleen of a drab or a Tory To hear critics disputing my claim to Empedocles, Maud, and the Laboratory. Yes, it's singular--nay, I can't think of a parallel (ain't it a high lark? As that Countess would say)--there are few men believe it was I wrote the
Ode to a Skylark.?And it often has given myself and Lord Albert no end of diversion To hear fellows maintain to my face it was Wordsworth who wrote the
Excursion,?When they know that whole reams of the verses recur in my authorized works Here and there, up and down! Why, such readers are infidels--heretics--
Turks.?And the pitiful critics who think in their paltry presumption to pay me a Pretty compliment, pairing me off, sir, with Keats--as if _he_ could
write Lamia!?While I never produced a more characteristic and exquisite book, One that gave me more real satisfaction, than did, on the whole, Lalla
Rookh.?Was it there that I called on all debtors, being pestered myself by a
creditor, (he?Isn't paid yet) to rise, by the proud appellation of bondsmen--hereditary? Yes--I think so. And yet, on my word, I can't think why I think it was so. It more probably was in the poem I made a few seasons ago?On that Duchess--her name now? ah, thus one outlives a whole cycle of joys! Fair supplants black and brown succeeds golden. The poem made rather a
noise.?And indeed I have seen worse verses; but as for the woman, my friend-- Though his neck had been never so stiff, she'd have made a philosopher
bend.?As the broken heart of a sunset that bleeds pure purple and gold In the shudder and swoon of the sickness of colour, the agonies old That engirdle the brows of the day when he sinks with a spasm into rest And the splash of his kingly blood is dashed on the skirts of the west, Even such was my own, when I felt how much sharper than any snake's tooth Was the passion that made me mistake Lady Eve for her niece Lady Ruth. The whole world, colourless, lapsed. Earth fled from my feet like a dream, And the whirl of the walls of Space was about me, and moved as a stream Flowing and ebbing and flowing all night to a weary tune?("Such as that of my verses"? Get out!) in the face of a sick-souled moon. The keen stars kindled and faded and fled,