PARADISE REVISED
Playing hymn-tunes day and night
On a harp may be all right
For the grown-ups; but for me,
I do wish that heaven could be
Sort o' like a circus, run
So a kid could have some fun!
There I'd not play harps, but horns
When I chased the unicorns—
Magic tubes with pistons greasy,
Slides that pushed and pulled out easy,
Cylinders of snaky brass
Where the fingers like to fuss,
Polished like a looking-glass,
Ending in a blunderbuss.
I would ride a horse of steel
Wound up with a ratchet-wheel.
Every beast I'd put to rout
Like the man I read about.
I would singe the leopard's hair,
Stalk the vampire and the adder,
Drive the werewolf from his lair,
Make the mad gorilla madder.
Needle-guns my work should do.
But, if beasts got closer to,
I would pierce them to the marrow
With a barbed and poisoned arrow,
Or I'd whack 'em on the skull
Till my scimiter was dull.
If these weapons didn't work,
With a kris or bowie-knife,
Poniard, assegai, or dirk,
I would make them beg for life;—
Spare them, though, if they'd be good
And guard me from what haunts the wood—
From those creepy, shuddery sights
That come round a fellow nights—
Imps that squeak and trolls that prowl,
Ghouls, the slimy devil-fowl,
Headless goblins with lassoes,
Scarlet witches worse than those,
Flying dragon-fish that bellow
So as most to scare a fellow....
There, as nearly as I could,
I would live like Robin Hood,
Taking down the mean and haughty,
Getting plunder from the naughty
To reward all honest men
Who should seek my outlaw's den.
When I'd wearied of these pleasures
I'd go hunt for hidden treasures—
In no ordinary way,
Pirates' luggers I'd waylay;
Board them from my sinking dory,
Wade through decks of gore and glory,
Drive the fiends, with blazing matchlock,
Down below, and snap the hatch-lock.
Next, I'd scud beneath the sky-land,
Sight the hills of Treasure Island,
Prowl and peer and prod and prise,
Till there burst upon my eyes
Just the proper pirate's freight:
Gold doubloons and pieces of eight!
Then—the very best of all—
Suddenly a stranger tall
Would appear, and I'd forget
That we hadn't ever met.
And with cap upthrown I'd greet him
(Turning from the plunder, yellow)
And I'd hurry fast to meet him,
For he'd be the very fellow
Who, I think, invented fun—
Robert Louis Stevenson.
The enthusiasms of this barbaric period never died. They grew up, instead, and proved serviceable friends. Fishing and hunting are now the high-lights of vacation time. The crude call of the weird and the inexplicable has modulated into a siren note from the forgotten psychic continents which we Western peoples have only just discovered and begun to explore. As for the buried treasure craze—why, my life-work practically amounts to a daily search for hidden valuables in the cellars and attics, the chimney-pieces and desert islands of the mind, and secret attempts to coin them into currency.
And so I might go on to tell of my enthusiasms for no end of other things like reading, modeling, folk-lore, cathedrals, writing, pictures, and the theater. Then there is the long story of that enthusiasm called Love, of Friendship its twin, and their elder brother, Religion, and their younger sister, Altruism. And travel and adventure and so on. But no! It is, I believe, a misdemeanor to obtain attention under false pretenses. If I have caught the reader's eye by promising to illustrate in outline a new method of writing autobiography, I must not abuse his confidence by putting that method into practice. So, with a regret almost equal to that of Lewis Carroll's famous Bellman—
I skip twenty years—