WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE

MADE AT THE COCK.

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,
But may she still be kind,
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.

I pledge her, and she comes and dips
Her laurel in the wine,

And lays it thrice upon my lips,
These favour'd lips of mine;
Until the charm have power to make
New lifeblood warm the bosom,
And barren commonplaces break
In full and kindly blossom.

I pledge her silent at the board;
Her gradual fingers steal
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

By many pleasant ways,
Against its fountain upward runs
The current of my days:

I kiss the lips I once have kiss'd;
The gas-light wavers dimmer;

And softly, thro' a vinous mist,

My college friendships glimmer.,

I grow in worth, and wit, and sense,
Unboding critic-pen,

Or that eternal want of pence,

Which vexes public men,

Who hold their hands to all, and cry For that which all deny them— Who sweep the crossings, wet or dry, And all the world go by them.

Ah yet, tho' all the world forsake,
Tho' fortune clip my wings,

I will not cramp my heart, nor take
Half-views of men and things.
Let Whig and Tory stir their blood;
There must be stormy weather;
But for some true result of good
All parties work together.

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 raff's 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 thro' a kind of glory.

Head-waiter, honour'd by the guest
Half-mused, or reeling-ripe,

The pint, you brought me, was the best
That ever came from pipe.

But tho' the port surpasses praise,
My nerves have dealt with stiffer.
Is there some magic in the place?
Or do my peptics differ?

For since I came to live and learn,
No pint of white or red

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,
With many kinsmen gay,

Where long and largely we carouse
As who shall say me nay:
Each month, a birth-day coming on,
We drink defying trouble,

Or sometimes two would meet in one,
And then we drank it double;

Whether the vintage, yet unkept,
Had relish fiery-new,

Or, elbow-deep in sawdust, slept,
As old as Waterloo ;

Or stow'd (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 answer'd to my call,

She changes with that mood or this,

Is all-in-all to all:

She lit the spark within my throat,
To make my blood run quicker,
Used all her fiery will, and smote
Her life into the liquor.