Summer Portents

Come, let us quaff the brimming cup     Of sorrow, bitterness, and pain;     For clearly, things are warming up     Again.     Observe with what awakened powers     The vulgar Sun resumes the right     Of rising in the hallowed hours     Of night.     Bound to the village water-wheel,     The motive bullock bows his crest,     And signals forth a mute appeal     For rest.     His neck is galled beneath the yoke:     His patient eyes are very dim:     Life is a dismal sort of joke     To him.     Yet one there is, to whom the ox     Is kin; who knows, as habitat,     The cold, unsympathetic box,     Or mat;     Who urges on, with wearied arms,     The punkah's rhythmic, laboured sweep,     Nor dares to contemplate the charms     Of sleep.     Now 'mid a host of lesser things     That pasture through the heaving nights,     The sharp mosquito flaps his wings,     And bites;     With other Anthropophagi,     Such as that microscopic brand     The common Sand-fly (or the fly     Of sand),     Who, with a hideous lust uncurbed     By clappings of the frequent palm,     Devours one's ankles, undisturbed,     And calm.     The scorpion nips one unaware:     The lizard flops upon the head:     And cobras, uninvited, share     One's bed.     Oh, if I only had the luck     To feel the grand Olympic fire     That thrilled the Greater when they struck     The lyre!     When Homer wrote of this and that:     When Dante sang like one possessed:     When Milton groaned and laboured at     His Best!     Had I the swelling rise and fall,     Whereof the Bo'sun's quivering moan     Derives a breezy fragrance all     Its own:     Oh, I would pour such passion out -     Good gracious me! - I would so sing     That you should know the facts about     This thing!     Then w-w-wake, my Lyre! O halting lilt!     O miserable, broken lay!     It may not be: I am not built     That way.     Yet other gifts the gods bestow.     I do not weep, I do not grieve.     Far from it. I shall simply go     On leave.