WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE 1 MADE AT THE COCK. O PLUMP head-waiter at The Cock, 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, But may she still be kind, To make me write my random rhymes, Ere they be half-forgotten; Till all be ripe and rotten. I pledge her, and she comes and dips And lays it thrice upon my lips, 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. Thro' many an hour of summer suns I kiss the lips I once have kiss'd; My college friendships glimmer. I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Or that eternal want of pence, Who hold their hands to all, and cry Ah yet, tho' all the world forsake, Let Whig and Tory stir their blood; Let there be thistles, there are grapes ; Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme, 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, Head-waiter, honour'd by the guest The pint, you brought me, was the best But tho' 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 season'd brain about, Unsubject to confusion, Tho' soak'd and saturate, out and out, Thro' every convolution. For I am of a numerous house, Where long and largely we carouse Or sometimes two would meet in one, Whether the vintage, yet unkept, Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept, Or stow'd (when classic Canning died) 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, Her life into the liquor. |