Times Revenges

Ive a Friend, over the sea;     I like him, but he loves me;     It all grew out of the books I write;     They find such favour in his sight     That he slaughters you with savage looks     Because you dont admire my books:     He does himself though, and if some vein     Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,     To-morrow month, if I lived to try,     Round should I just turn quietly,     Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand     Till I found him, come from his foreign land     To be my nurse in this poor place,     And make my broth and wash my face,     And light my fire and, all the while,     Bear with his old good-humoured smile     That I told him Better have kept away     Than come and kill me, night and day,     With, worse than fever throbs and shoots,     The creaking of his clumsy boots.     I am as sure that this he would do     As that Saint Pauls is striking two:     And I think I rather . . . woe is me!     Yes, rather see him than not see,     If lifting a hand could seat him there     Before me in the empty chair     To-night, when my head aches indeed,     And I can neither think nor read     Nor make these purple fingers hold     The pen; this garrets freezing cold!     And Ive a Lady, There he wakes,     The laughing fiend and prince of snakes     Within me, at her name, to pray     Fate send some creature in the way     Of my love for her, to be down-torn,     Upthrust and outward borne,     So I might prove myself that sea     Of passion which I needs must be!     Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint,     And my style infirm and its figures faint,     All the critics say, and more blame yet,     And not one angry word you get!     But, please you, wonder I would put     My cheek beneath that Ladys foot     Rather than trample under mine     The laurels of the Florentine,     And you shall see how the devil spends     A fire God gave for other ends!     I tell you, I stride up and down     This garret, crowned with loves best crown,     And feasted with loves perfect feast,     To think I kill for her, at least,     Body and soul and peace and fame,     Alike youths end and manhoods aim,     So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,     Filled full, eaten out and in     With the face of her, the eyes of her,     The lips, the little chin, the stir     Of shadow round her month; and she     Ill tell you, calmly would decree     That I should roast at a slow fire,     If that would compass her desire     And make her one whom they invite     To the famous ball to-morrow night.     There may be Heaven; there must be Hell;     Meantime, there is our Earth here, well!