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,

[Pg 407]

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?

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