* * * *
Oh, ’tis well that I should bluster,—much I’m like to make of that;
Better comfort have I found in singing “All Around my Hat.”
But that song, so wildly plaintive, palls upon my British ears.
’Twill not do to pine for ever,—I am getting up in years.
Can’t I turn the honest penny, scribbling for the weekly press,
And in writing Sunday libels drown my private wretchedness! [121]
Oh, to feel the wild pulsation that in manhood’s dawn I knew,
When my days were all before me, and my years were twenty-two!
When I smoked my independent pipe along the Quadrant wide, [122a]
With the many larks of London flaring up on every side;
When I went the pace so wildly, caring little what might come;
Coffee-milling care and sorrow, with a nose-adapted thumb; [122b]
Felt the exquisite enjoyment, tossing nightly off, oh heavens!
Brandies at the Cider Cellars, kidneys smoking-hot at Evans’! [122c]
Or in the Adelphi sitting, half in rapture, half in tears,
Saw the glorious melodrama conjure up the shades of years!
Saw Jack Sheppard, noble stripling, act his wondrous feats again,
Snapping Newgate’s bars of iron, like an infant’s daisy chain.