On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes
editImpetuously I sprang from bed,
- Long before lunch was up,
That I might drain the dizzy dew
- From day's first golden cup.
In swift devouring ecstacy
- Each toil in turn was done;
I had done lying on the lawn
- Three minutes after one.
For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
- The duties shine like stars;
I formed my uncle's character,
- Decreasing his cigars.
But could my kind engross me? No!
- Stern Art--what sons escape her?
Soon I was drawing Gladstone's nose
- On scraps of blotting paper.
Then on--to play one-fingered tunes
- Upon my aunt's piano.
In short, I have a headlong soul,
- I much resemble Hanno.
(Forgive the entrance of the not
- Too cogent Carthaginian.
It may have been to make a rhyme;
- I lean to that opinion).
Then my great work of book research
- Till dusk I took in hand--
The forming of a final, sound
- Opinion on _The Strand_.
But when I quenched the midnight oil,
- And closed _The Referee_,
Whose thirty volumes folio
- I take to bed with me,
I had a rather funny dream,
- Intense, that is, and mystic;
I dreamed that, with one leap and yell,
- The world became artistic.
The Shopmen, when their souls were still,
- Declined to open shops--
And Cooks recorded frames of mind
- In sad and subtle chops.
The stars were weary of routine:
- The trees in the plantation
Were growing every fruit at once,
- In search of a sensation.
The moon went for a moonlight stroll,
- And tried to be a bard,
And gazed enraptured at itself:
- I left it trying hard.
The sea had nothing but a mood
- Of 'vague ironic gloom,'
With which t'explain its presence in
- My upstairs drawing-room.
The sun had read a little book
- That struck him with a notion:
He drowned himself and all his fires
- Deep in the hissing ocean.
Then all was dark, lawless, and lost:
- I heard great devilish wings:
I knew that Art had won, and snapt
- The Covenant of Things.
I cried aloud, and I awoke,
- New labours in my head.
I set my teeth, and manfully
- Began to lie in bed.
Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
- So I my life conduct.
Each morning see some task begun,
- Each evening see it chucked.
But still, in sudden moods of dusk,
- I hear those great weird wings,
Feel vaguely thankful to the vast
- Stupidity of things.