Оценить:
 Рейтинг: 0

Phantasmagoria and Other Poems

Год написания книги
2017
<< 1 ... 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ... 26 >>
На страницу:
8 из 26
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля

“The day he was elected Mayor
I know that every Sprite meant
To vote for me, but did not dare —
He was so frantic with despair
And furious with excitement.

“When it was over, for a whim,
He ran to tell the King;
And being the reverse of slim,
A two-mile trot was not for him
A very easy thing.

“So, to reward him for his run
(As it was baking hot,
And he was over twenty stone),
The King proceeded, half in fun,
To knight him on the spot.”

“’Twas a great liberty to take!”
(I fired up like a rocket).
“He did it just for punning’s sake:
‘The man,’ says Johnson, ‘that would make
A pun, would pick a pocket!’”

“A man,” said he, “is not a King.”
I argued for a while,
And did my best to prove the thing —
The Phantom merely listening
With a contemptuous smile.

At last, when, breath and patience spent,
I had recourse to smoking —
“Your aim,” he said, “is excellent:
But – when you call it argument—
Of course you’re only joking?”

Stung by his cold and snaky eye,
I roused myself at length
To say “At least I do defy
The veriest sceptic to deny
That union is strength!”

“That’s true enough,” said he, “yet stay – ”
I listened in all meekness —
“Union is strength, I’m bound to say;
In fact, the thing’s as clear as day;
But onions are a weakness.”

CANTO VI

Dyscomfyture

As one who strives a hill to climb,
Who never climbed before:
Who finds it, in a little time,
Grow every moment less sublime,
And votes the thing a bore:

Yet, having once begun to try,
Dares not desert his quest,
But, climbing, ever keeps his eye
On one small hut against the sky
Wherein he hopes to rest:

Who climbs till nerve and force are spent,
With many a puff and pant:
Who still, as rises the ascent,
In language grows more violent,
Although in breath more scant:

Who, climbing, gains at length the place
That crowns the upward track.
And, entering with unsteady pace,
Receives a buffet in the face
That lands him on his back:

And feels himself, like one in sleep,
Glide swiftly down again,
A helpless weight, from steep to steep,
Till, with a headlong giddy sweep,
He drops upon the plain —

So I, that had resolved to bring
Conviction to a ghost,
And found it quite a different thing
From any human arguing,
Yet dared not quit my post

But, keeping still the end in view
To which I hoped to come,
I strove to prove the matter true
By putting everything I knew
Into an axiom:

Commencing every single phrase
With ‘therefore’ or ‘because,’
I blindly reeled, a hundred ways,
About the syllogistic maze,
Unconscious where I was.
<< 1 ... 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ... 26 >>
На страницу:
8 из 26