“When the Furies with their whips
Flogg’d Orestes all to strips!
“When the sun in dim eclipse
In the darken’d ocean dips!”
Still I see no clue to chips!
“Meadows where the lambkin skips,
Where the dew from roses drips
And the bee the honey sips . . . .”
Odd, that nothing leads to chips!
Then I thought of “cranks and quips,”
Wanton wiles and laughing lips,
Luring us to fatal slips,
And leaving us in Satan’s grips.
Then I made a desperate trial,
With the sixth and seventh vial—
Thinking I could steal some Chips
From St. John’s Apocalypse.
Then there came a long hiatus,
While I kept repeating Chips,
Feeling the divine afflatus
Oozing through my finger-tips.
Gone and going hopelessly,
So, in my accustom’d manner,
Underneath my favourite tree,
I began a mild havannah—
’Twas indeed my favourite station,
For recruiting mind and body;
Drinking draughts of inspiration,
Alternate with whisky toddy.
’Twas an oak tree old and hoary.
And my garden’s pride and glory;
Hallow’d trunk and boughs in splinters,
Mossy with a thousand winters.
Here I found the Muses’ fountain,
And perceived my spirits mounting,
And exclaim’d in accents burning,
To the tree my eyes upturning,
“Venerable tree and vast,
Speak to me of ages past!
Sylvan monarch of the wold,
Tell me of the days of old!
Did thy giant boughs o’er-arching
View the Roman legions marching?
Has the painted Briton stray’d
Underneath thy hoary shade?
Did some heathen oracle
In thy knotty bosom dwell,
As in groves of old Dodona,
Or the Druid oaks of Mona?
Dwelt the outlaw’d foresters
Here in ‘otium cum dig.’
While the feather’d choristers
In thy branches ‘hopp’d the twig?’
Help me, Nymph! Fawn! Hamadryad!
One at once, or all the Triad.”