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,
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?
You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of
it clings!
I have lived out my time--I have prigged lots of verse--I have kissed
(ah, that stings!)
Lips that swore I had cribbed every line that I wrote on them--cribbed--
honour bright!
Then I loathed her; but now I forgive her; perhaps after all she was right.
Yet I swear it was shameful--unwomanly, Bill, sir--to say that I fibbed.
Why, the poems were mine, for I bought them in print. Cribbed? of course
they were cribbed.
Yet I wouldn't say, cribbed from the French--Lady Bathsheba thought it
was vulgar--
But picked up on the banks of the Don, from the lips of a highly
intelligent Bulgar.
I'm aware, Bill, that's out of all metre--I can't help it--I'm none of
your sort
Who set metres, by Jove, above morals--not exactly. They don't go to
Court--
As I mentioned one night to that cowslip-faced pet, Lady Rahab Redrabbit
(Whom the Marquis calls Drabby for short). Well, I say, if you want a
thing, grab it--
That's what I did, at least, when I took that _danseuse_ to a swell