On The Disastrous Spread Of stheticism 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.