Go write your lively sketches! be the first
“Blougram, or The Eccentric Confidence”—­
Or better simply say, “The Outward-bound.” 
Why, men as soon would throw it in my teeth
As copy and quote the infamy chalked broad
About me on the church-door opposite. 
You will not wait for that experience though,
I fancy, howsoever you decide,
To discontinue—­not detesting, not
Defaming, but at least—­despising me! 970
__________________________________________

Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour
Sylvester Blougram, styled in partibus
Episcopus, nec non—­(the deuce knows what
It’s changed to by our novel hierarchy)
With Gigadibs the literary man,
Who played with spoons, explored his plate’s design,
And ranged the olive-stones about its edge,
While the great bishop rolled him out a mind
Long crumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth.

For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke. 980
The other portion, as he shaped it thus
For argumentatory purposes,
He felt his foe was foolish to dispute. 
Some arbitrary accidental thoughts
That crossed his mind, amusing because new,
He chose to represent as fixtures there,
Invariable convictions (such they seemed
Beside his interlocutor’s loose cards
Flung daily down, and not the same way twice)
While certain hell-deep instincts, man’s weak tongue 990
Is never bold to utter in their truth
Because styled hell-deep (’t is an old mistake
To place hell at the bottom of the earth)
He ignored these—­not having in readiness
Their nomenclature and philosophy: 
He said true things, but called them by wrong names. 
“On the whole,” he thought, “I justify myself
On every point where cavillers like this
Oppugn my life:  he tries one kind of fence,
I close, he’s worsted, that’s enough for him. 1000
He’s on the ground:  if ground should break away
I take my stand on, there’s a firmer yet
Beneath it, both of us may sink and reach. 
His ground was over mine and broke the first: 
So, let him sit with me this many a year!”

He did not sit five minutes.  Just a week
Sufficed his sudden healthy vehemence. 
Something had struck him in the “Outward-bound”
Another way than Blougram’s purpose was: 
And having bought, not cabin-furniture 1010
But settler’s-implements (enough for three)
And started for Australia—­there, I hope,
By this time he has tested his first plough,
And studied his last chapter of St. John.

NOTES