Greybeards at Play/Spread

On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in All Classes
Impetuously I sprang from bed,
 * Long before lunch was up,

That I might drain the dizzy dew
 * From day's first golden cup.

In swift devouring ecstacy
 * Each toil in turn was done;

I had done lying on the lawn
 * Three minutes after one.

For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
 * The duties shine like stars;

I formed my uncle's character,
 * Decreasing his cigars.

But could my kind engross me? No!
 * Stern Art--what sons escape her?

Soon I was drawing Gladstone's nose
 * On scraps of blotting paper.

Then on--to play one-fingered tunes
 * Upon my aunt's piano.

In short, I have a headlong soul,
 * I much resemble Hanno.

(Forgive the entrance of the not
 * Too cogent Carthaginian.

It may have been to make a rhyme;
 * I lean to that opinion).

Then my great work of book research
 * Till dusk I took in hand--

The forming of a final, sound
 * Opinion on _The Strand_.

But when I quenched the midnight oil,
 * And closed _The Referee_,

Whose thirty volumes folio
 * I take to bed with me,

I had a rather funny dream,
 * Intense, that is, and mystic;

I dreamed that, with one leap and yell,
 * The world became artistic.

The Shopmen, when their souls were still,
 * Declined to open shops--

And Cooks recorded frames of mind
 * In sad and subtle chops.

The stars were weary of routine:
 * The trees in the plantation

Were growing every fruit at once,
 * In search of a sensation.

The moon went for a moonlight stroll,
 * And tried to be a bard,

And gazed enraptured at itself:
 * I left it trying hard.

The sea had nothing but a mood
 * Of 'vague ironic gloom,'

With which t'explain its presence in
 * My upstairs drawing-room.

The sun had read a little book
 * That struck him with a notion:

He drowned himself and all his fires
 * Deep in the hissing ocean.

Then all was dark, lawless, and lost:
 * I heard great devilish wings:

I knew that Art had won, and snapt
 * The Covenant of Things.

I cried aloud, and I awoke,
 * New labours in my head.

I set my teeth, and manfully
 * Began to lie in bed.

Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
 * So I my life conduct.

Each morning see some task begun,
 * Each evening see it chucked.

But still, in sudden moods of dusk,
 * I hear those great weird wings,

Feel vaguely thankful to the vast
 * Stupidity of things.