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SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER
Gr-r-r---there go, my heart`s abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God`s blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims---
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
At the meal we sit together:
_Salve tibi!_ I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
_Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What`s the Latin name for ``parsley``?_
What`s the Greek name for Swine`s Snout?
Whew! We`ll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we`re furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere `tis fit to touch our chaps---
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
---Can`t I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as `twere a Barbary corsair`s?
(That is, if he`d let it show!)
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu`s praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp---
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp.
Oh, those melons? If he`s able
We`re to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot`s table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!---And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
There`s a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial`s gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in`t?
Or, there`s Satan!---one might venture
Pledge one`s soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he`d miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We`re so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Hine ..._
`St, there`s Vespers! _Plena gratitude
Ave, Virgo!_ Gr-r-r---you swine!
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