Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I've been spinning, I've got back at last to my story's beginning: Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress, As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries, Or as those puzzling specimens which, in old histories, We read of his verses--the Oracles, namely,-- 50 (I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely, For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk, They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk, And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores,--) First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is Would induce a mustache, for you know he's _imberbis;_ Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position Was assailed by the age of his son the physician; At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately, 60 And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly; 'Mehercle! I'd make such proceeding felonious,-- Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius? Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an airing On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing; It leads one, 'tis true, through the primitive forest, Grand natural features, but then one has no rest; You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance, When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,-- Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?' 70 --Here the laurel leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne. 'Oh, weep with me, Daphne,' he sighed, 'for you know it's A terrible thing to be pestered with poets! But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good, She never will cry till she's out of the wood! What wouldn't I give if I never had known of her? 'Twere a kind of relief had I something to groan over: If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over, I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher, And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her. 80 One needs something tangible, though, to begin on,-- A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on; What boots all your grist? it can never be ground Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round; (Or, if 'tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor, And say it won't stir, save the wheel be well wet afore, Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"-- It is not a metaphor, though, 'tis a simile); A lily, perhaps, would set _my_ mill a-going, For just at this season, I think, they are blowing. 90 Here, somebody, fetch one; not very far hence They're in bloom by the score, 'tis but climbing a fence; There's a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his Whole garden, from one end to t'other, with lilies; A very good plan, were it not for satiety, One longs for a weed here and there, for variety; Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise, Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.'