Your wit's in a whirl, as you think, if some girl with a penchant for you, ups and marries you.
And ties you for life to the thing called a Wife,—that figment, that fraud, that illusion,
Where, what will you be? And you can't find a key to the epoch's chaotic confusion.
It seems Local Option is sure of adoption, and what a tyrannic majority
May "opt" for one day, you're unable to say, and in vain you appeal to Authority.
The Law of the Land is a labyrinth grand, which you can't understand, nor can anyone,
And that is a thought, with delirium fraught, an appalling, if 'tis not a penny one.
Now Law, the Old Antic, seems utterly frantic, absurdly romantic and maundering;
And Cool Common Sense has gone dotty and dense, in dim deserts of Sentiment wandering.
Now Reason and Right, hydrocephalous quite, are both Della-Cruscan and drivelling,