Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister

I.     GR-R-R there go, my hearts abhorrence!     Water your damned flower-pots, do!     If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,     Gods 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! II.     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:     Whats the Latin name for parsley?     Whats the Greek name for Swines Snout? III.     Whew! Well have our platter burnished,     Laid with care on our own shelf!     With a fire-new spoon were 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!) IV.     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,     Cant I see his dead eye glow,     Bright as twere a Barbary corsairs?     (That is, if hed let it show!) V.     When he finishes refection,     Knife and fork he never lays     Cross-wise, to my recollection,     As do I, in Jesus praise.     I the Trinity illustrate,     Drinking watered orange-pulp     In three sips the Arian frustrate;     fWhile he drains his at one gulp. VI.     Oh, those melons? If hes able     Were to have a feast! so nice!     One goes to the Abbots 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! VII.     Theres 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? VIII.     Or, my scrofulous French novel     On grey paper with blunt type!     Simply glance at it, you grovel     Hand and foot in Belials gripe:     If I double down its pages     At the woeful sixteenth print,     When he gathers his greengages,     Ope a sieve and slip it int? IX.     Or, theres Satan! one might venture     Pledge ones soul to him, yet leave     Such a flaw in the indenture     As hed miss till, past retrieve,     Blasted lay that rose-acacia     Were so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .     St, theres Vespers! Plena grati     Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r you swine!