GOD’S in His Heaven: He never issues (Wise Man!) to visit this world of ours. Unchecked the cancer gnaws our tissues, Stops to lick chops and then again devours. Those find, who most delight to roam ’Mid castles of remotest Spain, That there’s, thank Heaven, no place like home; So they set out upon their travels again. Beauty for some provides escape, Who gain a happiness in eyeing The gorgeous buttocks of the ape Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying. And some to better worlds than this Mount up on wings as frail and misty As passion’s all-too-transient kiss (Though afterwards—oh, _omne animal triste_!) But I, too rational by half To live but where I bodily am. Can only do my best to laugh. Can only sip my misery dram by dram. While happier mortals take to drink, A dolorous dipsomaniac, Fuddled with grief I sit and think, Looking upon the bile when it is black. Then brim the bowl with atrabilious liquor! We’ll pledge our Empire vast across the flood: For Blood, as all men know, than Water’s thicker, But water’s wider, thank the Lord, than Blood. MORNING SCENE LIGHT through the latticed blind Spans the dim intermediate space With parallels of luminous dust To gild a nuptial couch, where Goya’s mind Conceived those agonising hands, that hair Scattered, and half a sunlit bosom bare, And, imminently above them, a red face Fixed in the imbecile earnestness of lust. VERREY’S HERE, every winter’s night at eight, Epicurus lies in state, Two candles at his head and two Candles at his feet. A few Choice spirits watch beneath the vault Of his dim chapel, where default Of music fills the pregnant air With subtler requiem and prayer Than ever an organ wrought with notes Spouted from its tubal throats. Black Ethiopia’s Holy Child, The Cradled Bottle, breathes its mild Meek spirit on the ravished nose, The palate and the tongue of those Who piously partake with me Of this funereal agape. FRASCATI’S