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.

Through 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 kissed;
The gas-light wavers dimmer;
And softly, through 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, though all the world forsake,
Though fortune clip my wings,

I will not cramp my heart, nor take
Half-views of men and things.

178

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 raffs 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 through a kind of glory.

Head-waiter, honored by the guest
Half-mused or reeling ripe,

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

But though 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 seasoned brain about,

Unsubject to confusion,

Though soaked and saturate, out and out, Through 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 birthday 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 stowed (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 answered 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.

And hence this halo lives about
The waiter's hands, that reach
To each his perfect pint of stout,
His proper chop to each.

He looks not like the common breed
That with the napkin dally;

I think he came, like Ganymede,
From some delightful valley.

The Cock was of a larger egg
Than modern poultry drop,
Stept forward on a firmer leg,

And crammed a plumper crop;
Upon an ampler dunghill trod,
Crowed lustier late and early,
Sipt wine from silver, praising God,
And raked in golden barley.

A private life was all his joy,
Till in a court he saw
A something-pottle-bodied boy,
That knuckled at the taw:

He stooped and clutched him, fair and good,
Flew over roof and casement:

His brothers of the weather stood

Stock-still for sheer amazement.

But he, by farmstead, thorpe, and spire,
And followed with acclaims,

A sign to many a staring shire,
Came crowing over Thames.

Right down by smoky Paul's they bore,
Till, where the street grows straiter,
One fixed forever at the door,

And one became head-waiter.

But whither would my fancy go?
How out of place she makes
The violet of a legend blow
Among the chops and steaks!
"T is but a steward of the can,

One shade more plump than common; As just and mere a serving-man

As any, born of woman.

I ranged too high: what draws me down
Into the common day?

Is it the weight of that half-crown
Which I shall have to pay?
For, something duller than at first,
Nor wholly comfortable,

I sit (my empty glass reversed),
And thrumming on the table:

Half fearful that, with self at strife,
I take myself to task;

Lest of the fulness of my life

I leave an empty flask: