Childhood Friends
Himself when he sips enchanted of
The cup where you sated your youth's glad ire.
Where in all the befuddling joust of love
Are the noble raptures men sing to the lyre?
These lovers will start if you rap on the door
Like a school of fishes you scare with an oar.
Had love the worth of two rhymes in it,
Don Juan, who laughs as he leans on his blade,
Would not be the one man who boldly flayed
The avenger's back with his scourging wit.
Is thirst a fine thing because throats will thirst?
When the amorous poets, of liars the first,
Have set at the window the doll they admire,
With its rattle they lure the next passer-by,
For never doll danced before lover's eye
But it wakened a thrill of selfish desire.
Nay, to what likeness does love aspire?
It is but a little scampering rat,
That jumps in your way as you're going to bed,
And flies behind plank and door at your tread,
And because it slinks off in such mortal dread
'Tis a mark for the stone of each beggar brat.
Think not that Love hides a dream that is fraught
With cradles or any such worthy thought;
He's a tippler who in his secret lair
Pulls his cap down and whispers: "There's steps on the stair—
Don't pause but toss off the glass without heed."
The animal-lover, who cuts the cork
And hook from the fishing-rod, who will feed
The cup where you sated your youth's glad ire.
Where in all the befuddling joust of love
Are the noble raptures men sing to the lyre?
These lovers will start if you rap on the door
Like a school of fishes you scare with an oar.
Had love the worth of two rhymes in it,
Don Juan, who laughs as he leans on his blade,
Would not be the one man who boldly flayed
The avenger's back with his scourging wit.
Is thirst a fine thing because throats will thirst?
When the amorous poets, of liars the first,
Have set at the window the doll they admire,
With its rattle they lure the next passer-by,
For never doll danced before lover's eye
But it wakened a thrill of selfish desire.
Nay, to what likeness does love aspire?
It is but a little scampering rat,
That jumps in your way as you're going to bed,
And flies behind plank and door at your tread,
And because it slinks off in such mortal dread
'Tis a mark for the stone of each beggar brat.
Think not that Love hides a dream that is fraught
With cradles or any such worthy thought;
He's a tippler who in his secret lair
Pulls his cap down and whispers: "There's steps on the stair—
Don't pause but toss off the glass without heed."
The animal-lover, who cuts the cork
And hook from the fishing-rod, who will feed
99
