snuggery,
And proposed a light supper by way of a finish.  I treated her, Bill,
To six entrees of ortolans, sprats, maraschino, and oysters.  It made
    her quite ill. 
Of which moment of sickness I took some advantage.  I held her like this,
And availed myself, sir, of her sneezing, to shut up her lips with a kiss. 
The waiters, I saw, were quite struck; and I felt, I may say, entre nous,
Like Don Juan, Lauzun, Almaviva, Lord Byron, and old Richelieu. 
(You’ll observe, Bill, that rhyme’s quite Parisian; a Londoner, sir,
    would have cited old Q.
People tell me the French in my verses recalls that of Jeames or John
    Thomas:  I
Must maintain it’s as good as the average accent of British diplomacy.)
These are moments that thrill the whole spirit with spasms that excite
    and exalt. 
I stood more than the peer of the great Casanova—­you know—­de Seingalt. 
She was worth, sir, I say it without hesitation, two brace of her sisters. 
Ah, why should all honey turn rhubarb—­all cherries grow onions—­all
    kisses leave blisters? 
Oh, and why should I ask myself questions?  I’ve heard such before—­once
    or twice. 
Ah, I can’t understand it—­but, O, I imagine it strikes me as nice. 
There’s a deity shapes us our ends, sir, rough-hew them, my boy, how
    we will—­
As I stated myself in a poem I published last year, you know, Bill—­
Where I mentioned that that was the question—­to be, or, by Jove, not
    to be. 
Ah, it’s something—­you’ll think so hereafter—­to wait on a poet like me. 
Had I written no more than those verses on that Countess I used to
    call Pussy—­
Yes, Minette or Manon—­and—­you’ll hardly believe it—­she said they
    were all out of Musset. 
Now I don’t say they weren’t—­but what then? and I don’t say they
    were—­I’ll bet pounds against pennies on
The subject—­I wish I may never die Laureate, if some of them weren’t
    out of Tennyson. 
And I think—­I don’t like to be certain, with Death, so to speak, by
    me, frowning—­
But I think there were some—­say a dozen, perhaps, or a score—­out of
    Browning. 
And—­though God knows his poems are not (as all mine are, sir) perfumed
    with orris—­
Or at least with patchouli—­I wouldn’t be sworn there were none out of
    Morris. 
And it’s possible—­only the legend of Circe is quite an old yarn—­old
As the hills—­that I might have been thinking, perhaps, of a poem by Arnold
When I sang how Ulysses—­Odysseus I mean—­would have yearned to dishevel
    her
Bright hair with his kisses, and painted myself at her feet—­a Strayed
    Reveller. 
As for poets who go on a contrary tack to what I go and you go—­
You remember my lyrics translated—­like “sweet bully Bottom”—­from Hugo? 
Though I will say it’s curious that simply on just that account there