Overlooking his bit of a garden;
One can see the great ass at one end of his brass
Blaring out, never asking your pardon:
This terrible blurting he thinks is not hurting,
As long as his own ear-drums harden.

He thinks, I've no doubt, it is sweet,
While thus Time and Tune he is flaying;
The little house-sparrows feel all through their marrows
The jar and the fuss of his playing,--
The windows all shaking, the babies all waking,
The very dogs howling and baying.

One note out of twenty he hits,
And, cheered, blows _pianos_ like _fortes_.
His time is his own. He goes sounding alone,
(A sort of Columbus or Cortés,)
On a perilous ocean, without any notion
Whereabouts in the dim deep his port is.

Like a man late from club, he has lost
His key, and around stumbles moping,
Touching this, trying that, now a sharp, now a flat,
Till he strikes on the note he is hoping,
And a terrible blare at the end of the air
Shows he's got through at last with his groping.

There,--he's finished,--at least, for a while;
He is tired, or come to his senses;
And out of his horn shakes the drops that were borne