The Heptalogia | Page 6

their growth
Or have a baby
with two heads?
IDYL CCCLXVI
THE KID
My spirit, in the doorway's pause,
Fluttered with fancies in my breast;

Obsequious to all decent laws,
I felt exceedingly distressed.
I
knew it rude to enter there
With Mrs. V. in such a state;
And, 'neath
a magisterial air,
Felt actually indelicate.
I knew the nurse began to
grin;
I turned to greet my Love. Said she--
"Confound your modesty,
come in!
--What shall we call the darling, V.?"
(There are so many
charming names!
Girls'--Peg, Moll, Doll, Fan, Kate, Blanche, Bab:

Boys'--Mahershahal-hashbaz, James,
Luke, Nick, Dick, Mark,
Aminadab.)
Lo, as the acorn to the oak,
As well-heads to the river's height,
As
to the chicken the moist yolk,
As to high noon the day's first white--


Such is the baby to the man.
There, straddling one red arm and leg,

Lay my last work, in length a span,
Half hatched, and conscious of
the egg.
A creditable child, I hoped;
And half a score of joys to be

Through sunny lengths of prospect sloped
Smooth to the bland
futurity.
O, fate surpassing other dooms,
O, hope above all wrecks
of time!
O, light that fills all vanquished glooms,
O, silent song
o'ermastering rhyme!
I covered either little foot,
I drew the strings
about its waist;
Pink as the unshell'd inner fruit,
But barely decent,
hardly chaste,
Its nudity had startled me;
But when the petticoats
were on,
"I know," I said; "its name shall be
Paul Cyril Athanasius
John."
"Why," said my wife, "the child's a girl."
My brain swooned,
sick with failing sense;
With all perception in a whirl,
How could I
tell the difference?
"Nay," smiled the nurse, "the child's 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