And it's often very cold and very wet; And my missis stitches towels for a hunks; And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let-- Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks. And we cough, the wife and I, to dislocate a sigh, When the noisy little kids are in their bunks. But you'll never hear _her_ do a growl, or whine, For she's made of flint and roses very odd; And I've got to cut my meaning rather fine Or I'd blubber, for _I'm_ made of greens and sod: So p'rhaps we are in hell for all that I can tell, And lost and damned and served up hot to God. I ain't blaspheming, Mr. Silvertongue; I'm saying things a bit beyond your art: Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung Thirty bob a week's the rummiest start! With your science and your books and your the'ries about spooks, Did you ever hear of looking in your heart? I didn't mean your pocket, Mr.; no! I mean that having children and a wife With thirty bob on which to come and go Isn't dancing to the tabor and the fife; When it doesn't make you drink, by Heaven, it makes you think, And notice curious items about life! I step into my heart and there I meet A god-almighty devil singing small, Who would like to shout and whistle in the street, And squelch the passers flat against the wall; If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take, He would take it, ask for more, and eat it all. And I meet a sort of simpleton beside-- The kind that life is always giving beans; With thirty bob a week to keep a bride He fell in love and married in his teens; At thirty bob he stuck, but he knows it isn't luck; He knows the seas are deeper than tureens. And the god-almighty devil and the fool That meet me in the High Street on the strike, When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool, Are my good and evil angels if you like; And both of them together in every kind of weather Ride me like a double-seated "bike." That's rough a bit and needs its meaning curled; But I have a high old hot un in my mind, A most engrugious notion of the world That leaves your lightning 'rithmetic behind: I give it at a glance when I say "There ain't no chance, Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind." And it's this way that I make it out to be: No fathers, mothers, countries, climates--none!-- Not Adam was responsible for me; Nor society, nor systems, nary one! A little sleeping seed, I woke--I did indeed-- A million years before the blooming sun. I woke because I thought the time had come; Beyond my will there was no other cause: And everywhere I found myself at home Because I chose to be the thing I was; And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape, I always went according to the laws.