| |
| THE CHARACTERS of great and small | |
| Come ready-made, we can’t bespeak one; | |
| Their sides are many, too, and all | |
| (Except ourselves) have got a weak one. | |
| Some sanguine people love for life, | 5 |
| Some love their hobby till it flings them. | |
| How many love a pretty wife | |
| For love of the éclat she brings them! | |
| |
| A little to relieve my mind | |
| I ’ve thrown off this disjointed chatter, | 10 |
| But more because I ’m disinclin’d | |
| To enter on a painful matter: | |
| Once I was bashful; I ’ll allow | |
| I ’ve blush’d for words untimely spoken; | |
| I still am rather shy, and now… | 15 |
| And now the ice is fairly broken. | |
| |
| We all have secrets: you have one | |
| Which may n’t be quite your charming spouse’s; | |
| We all lock up a skeleton | |
| In some grim chamber of our houses; | 20 |
| Familiars, who exhaust their days | |
| And nights in probing where our smart is, | |
| And who, excepting spiteful ways, | |
| Are “silent, unassuming parties.” | |
| |
| We hug this phantom we detest, | 25 |
| Rarely we let it cross our portals; | |
| It is a most exacting guest: | |
| Now, are we not afflicted mortals? | |
| Your neighbor Gay, that jovial wight, | |
| As Dives rich, and brave as Hector,— | 30 |
| Poor Gay steals twenty times a night, | |
| On shaking knees, to see his spectre. | |
| |
| Old Dives fears a pauper fate, | |
| So hoarding is his ruling passion: | |
| Some gloomy souls anticipate | 35 |
| A waistcoat straiter than the fashion! | |
| She childless pines, that lonely wife, | |
| And secret tears are bitter shedding; | |
| Hector may tremble all his life, | |
| And die,—but not of that he ’s dreading. | 40 |
| |
| Ah me, the World!—how fast it spins! | |
| The beldams dance, the caldron bubbles; | |
| They shriek, they stir it for our sins, | |
| And we must drain it for our troubles. | |
| We toil, we groan; the cry for love | 45 |
| Mounts up from this poor seething city, | |
| And yet I know we have above | |
| A FATHER infinite in pity. | |
| |
| When Beauty smiles, when Sorrow weeps, | |
| Where sunbeams play, where shadows darken, | 50 |
| One inmate of our dwelling keeps | |
| Its ghastly carnival; but hearken! | |
| How dry the rattle of the bones! | |
| That sound was not to make you start meant: | |
| Stand by! Your humble servant owns | 55 |
| The Tenant of this Dark Apartment. | |
| |
