EPISTLE TO ALBERT DEW-SMITH

Figure me to yourself, I pray —

A man of my peculiar cut —

Apart from dancing and deray,

Into an Alpine valley shut;

Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,

Discountenanced by God and man;

The food?— Sir, you would do as well

To cram your belly full of bran.

The company? Alas, the day

That I should dwell with such a crew,

With devil anything to say,

Nor any one to say it to!

The place? Although they call it Platz,

I will be bold and state my view;

It's not a place at all — and that's

The bottom verity, my Dew.

There are, as I will not deny,

Innumerable inns; a road;

Several Alps indifferent high;

The snow's inviolable abode;

Eleven English parsons, all

Entirely inoffensive; four

True human beings — what I call

Human — the deuce a cipher more;

A climate of surprising worth;

Innumerable dogs that bark;

Some air, some weather, and some earth;

A native race — God save the mark!—

A race that works, yet cannot work,

Yodels, but cannot yodel right,

Such as, unhelp'd, with rusty dirk,

I vow that I could wholly smite.

A river that from morn to night

Down all the valley plays the fool;

Not once she pauses in her flight,

Nor knows the comfort of a pool;

But still keeps up, by straight or bend,

The selfsame pace she hath begun —

Still hurry, hurry, to the end —

Good God, is that the way to run?

If I a river were, I hope

That I should better realise

The opportunities and scope

Of that romantic enterprise.

I should not ape the merely strange,

But aim besides at the divine;

And continuity and change

I still should labour to combine.

Here should I gallop down the race,

Here charge the sterlinglike a bull;

There, as a man might wipe his face,

Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.

But what, my Dew, in idle mood,

What prate I, minding not my debt?

What do I talk of bad or good?

The best is still a cigarette.

Me whether evil fate assault,

Or smiling providences crown —

Whether on high the eternal vault

Be blue, or crash with thunder down —

I judge the best, whate'er befall,

Is still to sit on one's behind,

And, having duly moistened all,

Smoke with an unperturbed mind.