A poet's heart, Bill,
Is a sort of a thing that is made of the tenderest young bloom on a fruit.
You may pass me the mixture at once, if you please--and I'll thank you
to boot
For that poem--and then for the julep. This really is damnable stuff!
(Not the poem, of course.) Do you snivel, old friend? well, it's nasty
enough,
But I think I can stand it--I think so--ay, Bill, and I could were it
worse.
But I'll tell you a thing that I can't and I won't. 'Tis the old, old
curse--
The gall of the gold-fruited Eden, the lure of the angels that fell.
'Tis the core of the fruit snake-spotted in the hush of the shadows of
hell,
Where a lost man sits with his head drawn down, and a weight on his eyes.
You know what I mean, Bill--the tender and delicate mother of lies,
Woman, the devil's first cousin--no doubt by the female side.
The breath of her mouth still moves in my hair, and I know that she lied,
And I feel her, Bill, sir, inside me--she operates there like a drug.
Were it better to live like a beetle, to wear the cast clothes of a slug,
Be the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat,
Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat?
You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir.
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