WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. MADE AT THE COCK. VOL. II. O PLUMP head-waiter at The Cock, To which I most resort, How goes the time? 'Tis five o'clock. Go fetch a pint of port: But let it not be such as that You set before chance-comers, But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers. No vain libation to the Muse, And whisper lovely words, and use Her influence on the mind. To make me write my random rhymes, Ere they be half-forgotten; Nor add and alter, many times, Till all be ripe and rotten. 8 I pledge her, and she comes and dips And lays it thrice upon my lips, These favored lips of mine; Until the charm have power to make I pledge her silent at the board; And touch upon the master-chord Of all I felt and feel. Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, And phantom hopes assemble; And that child's heart within the man's Begins to move and tremble. Through many an hour of summer suns, By many pleasant ways, The shadow of my days: I kiss the lips I once have kissed; My college friendships glimmer. I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men, Who hold their hands to all, and cry Ah yet, though all the world forsake, Let there be thistles, there are grapes; If old things, there are new; Ten thousand broken lights and shapes, Yet glimpses of the true. Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme, We lack not rhymes and reasons, As on this whirligig of Time We circle with the seasons. This earth is rich in man and maid; With fair horizons bound: This whole wide earth of light and shade Comes out, a perfect round. High over roaring Temple-bar, And, set in Heaven's third story, I look at all things as they are, But through a kind of glory. Head-waiter, honored by the guest Half-mused, or reeling-ripe, The pint, you brought me, was the best. But though the port surpasses praise, For since I came to live and learn, Had ever half the power to turn This wheel within my head, Which bears a seasoned brain about, Unsubject to confusion, Though soaked and saturate, out and out, Through every convolution. For I am of a numerous house, Where long and largely we carouse, Each month, a birth-day coming on, Or, sometimes two would meet in one, Whether the vintage, yet unkept, Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept, As old as Waterloo; Or stowed (when classic Canning died) In musty bins and chambers, Had cast upon its crusty side The gloom of ten Decembers. The Muse, the jolly Muse, it is! She changes with that mood or this, Is all-in-all to all: She lit the spark within my throat, |