Disillusioned By An Ex-Enthusiast

Oh, that my soul its gods could see     As years ago they seemed to me     When first I painted them;     Invested with the circumstance     Of old conventional romance:     Exploded theorem!     The bard who could, all men above,     Inflame my soul with songs of love,     And, with his verse, inspire     The craven soul who feared to die     With all the glow of chivalry     And old heroic fire;     I found him in a beerhouse tap     Awaking from a gin-born nap,     With pipe and sloven dress;     Amusing chums, who fooled his bent,     With muddy, maudlin sentiment,     And tipsy foolishness!     The novelist, whose painting pen     To legions of fictitious men     A real existence lends,     Brain-people whom we rarely fail,     Whene'er we hear their names, to hail     As old and welcome friends;     I found in clumsy snuffy suit,     In seedy glove, and blucher boot,     Uncomfortably big.     Particularly commonplace,     With vulgar, coarse, stockbroking face,     And spectacles and wig.     My favourite actor who, at will,     With mimic woe my eyes could fill     With unaccustomed brine:     A being who appeared to me     (Before I knew him well) to be     A song incarnadine;     I found a coarse unpleasant man     With speckled chin unhealthy, wan     Of self-importance full:     Existing in an atmosphere     That reeked of gin and pipes and beer     Conceited, fractious, dull.     The warrior whose ennobled name     Is woven with his country's fame,     Triumphant over all,     I found weak, palsied, bloated, blear;     His province seemed to be, to leer     At bonnets in Pall Mall.     Would that ye always shone, who write,     Bathed in your own innate limelight,     And ye who battles wage,     Or that in darkness I had died     Before my soul had ever sighed     To see you off the stage!