Classic Poem

When first he sought our haunts, he wore
His locks in Hamlet-style;
His brow with thought was ‘sicklied o'er,’—
We rarely saw him smile;
And, e'en when none was looking on,
His air was always woe-begone.

He kept, I think, his bosom bare
To imitate Jean Paul;
His solitary topics were
Æsthetics, Fate, and Soul;—
Although at times, but not for long,
He bowed his Intellect to song.

He served, he said, a Muse of Tears:
I know his verses breathed
A fine funereal air of biers,
And objects cypress-wreathed;—
Indeed, his tried aquaintance fled
An ode he named ‘The Sheeted Dead.’

In these light moods, I call to mind,
He darkly would allude
To some dread sorrow undefined,—
Some passion unsubdued;
Then break into a ghastly laugh,
And talk of Keats his epitaph.

He railed at women's faith as Cant;
We thought him grandest when
He named them Siren-shapes that ‘chant
On blanching bones of Men’;—
Alas, not e'en the great go free
From that insidious minstrelsy!

His lot, he oft would gravely urge,
Lay on a lone Rock where
Around Time-beaten bases surge
The Billows of Despair.
We dreamed it true. We never knew
What gentler ears he told it to.

We, bound with him in common care,
One-minded, celibate,
Resolved to Thought and Diet spare
Our lives to dedicate;—
We, truly, in no common sense,
Deserved his closest confidence!

But soon, and yet, though soon, too late,
We, sorrowing, sighed to find
A gradual softness enervate
That all superior mind,
Until,—in full assembly met,
He dared to speak of Etiquette.

The verse that we severe had known,
Assumed a wanton air,—
A fond effeminate monotone
Of eyebrows, lips, and hair;
Not ???? stirred him now or ????,
He read ‘The Angel in the House’!

Nay worse. He, once sublime to chaff,
Grew ludicrously sore
If we but named a photograph
We found him simpering o'er;
Or told how in his chambers lurked
A watch-guard intricately worked.

Then worse again. He tried to dress;
He trimmed his tragic mane;
Announced at length (to our distress)
He had not ‘lived in vain’;—
Thenceforth his one prevailing mood
Became a base beatitude.

And O Jean Paul, and Fate, and Soul!
We met him last, grown stout,
His throat with wedlock's triple roll,
‘All wool,’ enwound about;
His very hat had changed its brim;—
Our course was clear,— WE BANISHED HIM !