And wrote them out for my daily bread!
The Teuton beer-bibbers came and went,
Night after night, and stared, good folk,
At our table, noisy with argument,
And our chronic aureoles of smoke.
And oh, my life! but we all loved well
The talk,—free, fearless, keen, profound,—
The rockets of wit that flashed and fell
In that dull old tavern under-ground!
But there came a change in my days at last,