When days are long and nights are dull,
And life seems deathly still,
And wretched insects buzz and buzz
Against the window sill,
One balances the force of “Won’t”
Against the force of Will.
I live upon the outer edge,
And on the desert’s rim,
And sometimes query, in a tone
Quite humourless and grim,
Is life, indeed, a mere burlesque?
Some Potent Joker’s whim?
I give the Desert stare for stare,
We never fraternise;
For me the siren has no voice,
For her I have no eyes,
And whipcord couldn’t link us twain
In peaceful marriage ties.
She’s clothed in desolation’s garb,
And visaged like the Sphinx;
Too close communion oft begets
Those tortured mental kinks
That populate the upper end
Of men who mix their drinks.
She brings no help to sling a rhyme
That sniggers as it goes ...
Sometimes a thought comes limping in
With sand between its toes,
A well-developed polypus
Somewhere within its nose.
But when its wares are spread upon
The operating sheet
I mostly find them shadow hash,
With very little meat,
And so I shoot them out the door
To give the dog a treat.
There’s something in the very air
Of torture, finely spun;
The weight of care that bears me down
Weighs mighty near a ton;
The breakfast steak tastes like a brick,
The spuds are underdone.
The whole world’s badly out of joint,
And shaky at the knees;
And that old trouble with my back
It hints of Bright’s disease,
And barley-water in a ward,
And thumping doctors’ fees.
The touch of ’flu I caught last month
Grows daily worse and worse:
’Tis sure my plan to keep afloat
Till time and tide reverse,
Is, Take a load of beer aboard,
And jettison my purse!
For one must never count the cost
When health is in the scales
And dull-eyed devils roost upon
One’s mental boundary rails,
Nor bend an over-fearful ear
To timid travellers’ tales.
The same old wild and woolly whirl
Along the same old track,
Outpacing sundry ills I have,
To garner those I lack!
—And so, I slither down to hell
(But have to hoof it back).
Then Reason riots wild awhile,
With bells upon her cap,
Until the last resource is sped
Of coin, or kid, or strap;
And then—I come back smiling, a
Rejuvenated chap!