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 ecstasy
each toil in turn was done;
I had done lying on the lawn
three minutes after one.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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The Shopmen, when their souls were still,
declined to open shops --
and Cooks recorded frames of mind
in sad and subtle chops.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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