TO AURELIUS AND FURIUS.

16.

'LL trounce you, Furius, well, and you,
His peer in vice, Aurelius, too,
That dare to dub me debauchee,
Because my verse is rather free.
True poets should be chaste, I know,
But wherefore should their lines be so ?
To these what gives their zest and charm,
But this, that they are free and warm,
And burn with passion, that can fire
Not striplings merely with desire,
But thaw the sinews, thrill the sense
Of cramp'd and hoary impotence?
Yet reprobates like you conclude,
That I am infamously lewd,

Because my harmless lines, good lack!
Of kisses without number smack.
But mark me, if, when you peruse
The playful sallies of my muse,
You dare to handle me, as though
I were in lewdness sunk as low
As you are, I'll so handle you,
That you my wrath shall dearly rue!

K

ON A STUPID HUSBAND.

-0

ગ

H! Town, on your snake of a bridge that are longing

In dances, and mummings, and sports to be thronging,

But fear that its crazy old timbers, perhaps,

Coming down with a run, in the marsh may collapse,
A bridge may you get, strong and sturdy and grand
As your heart can desire; one that even will stand
'Neath the shock of the Salian rites, so you now
This boon for my special amusement allow !

There's a townsman of mine, whom I long to see sped From that bridge to the quagmire clean heels overhead, And just in that spot I would manage his fall, Where the sludge is the bluest and rankest of all. The man's a mere booby, a numskull, a gaby, With not so much sense as a two-years-old baby: Though he's wed to a girl still in womanhood's dawn, A creature more dainty and fine than a fawn,

One who guarded, like grapes that are red-ripe, should be,
He leaves her, and cares not a stiver, not he,

Where, how, or with whom her amusement she seeks;
Never budges nor moves, whatsoever her freaks,

But lies like a log in a ditch, just as though
He had no wife at all,—his blood is such snow.
So benumb'd in his wits is my booby, that he
Is as deaf and as blind as a buzzard can be ;

Yea, he knows not, the oaf, who himself is, or what, Or whether in fact he exists, or does not.

Him I'd pitch from your bridge, and so haply I might In the clod some small spark of emotion excite, And his soul's slough be left in the glutinous flood, As the mule leaves its iron shoe stuck in the mud.

ON A STUPID HUSBAND.

(ANOTHER VErsion.)

OLONIA dear,

That would'st fain on thy pier

Be dancing,

And prancing,

And standest all ready,

But shrinkest through fear,

Lest of timbers unsteady

The crazy erection

Come down with a crash,

And a smash,

And a splash,

And repose in the wash

Past all resurrection!

May Jupiter grant

Such a bridge as you want
To stand e'en the motions

Of Jumpers' devotions,

If from thence I may meet

With the exquisite treat

Of beholding a certain superlative ass,

Who's a man of my town,

Taken clean off his feet,

And like rubbish shot down,

To congenial ooze in the stinking morass.

The inanimate gaby

Knows less than a baby,

Sufficiently old

For its daddy to hold

In the utmost alarm,

While it sleeps on his arm.
There's a bride

That is tied

To this nincompoop fellow;
A neat little thing

In her bloomiest spring,
As soft as a kid,

To be guarded and hid
Like grapes that are mellow.
But he's blind to the risk,
Lets her gambol and frisk,
And cares not a groat,
In his helplessness sunk,
Like a half-rotten trunk,
Lying felled in a moat.
If she didn't exist

She'd be just as much miss'd,
For the lout's deaf and blind,
Hasn't made up his mind,

Who himself is, or what,

Or whether, in fact, he be or be not.

I should like from your bridge just to cant off the

log,

For the chance that his rapid descent to the bog

Might his lethargy jog,

And the sloth of his mind

Being there left behind,

In the quagmire should stay,

As the mule leaves his shoe in the glutinous clay.