CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

TIME'S REVENGES
XXXVIII
TIME'S REVENGES
I'VE a Friend, over the sea;
I like him, but he loves me ;
It all grew out of the l>ooks I write;
They find such favour in his sight
That he slaughters you with savage looks
B ecause you don't admire my books:
He does himself though,-and if some vein
Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,
To-morrow month, if I lived to try,
Round should I just turn quietly,
Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand
Till I found him, come from his foreign land
To be my nurse in this poor place,
And make me broth, and wash my face,
And light my fire, and, all the while,
Bear with his old good-humoured smile
That I told him " Better have kept away
" Than come and kill me, night and day,
" With worse than fever'S throbs and shoots,
" At the creaking of his clumsy boots."
I am as sure that this he would do,
As that Saint Paul's is striking Two:
And I think I had rather ... woe is me I
- Yes, rather see him than not see,
If lifting a hand would seat him there
Before me in the empty chair
To-night, when my head aches indeed,
And I can neither think, nor read,
And these blue fingers will not hold
The pen; this garret's freezing cold!
And I've a Lady-There he wakes,
The laughing fiend and prince of snakes
Within me, at her name, to pray
Fate send some creature in the way
Of my love for her, to be down-torn
Upthrust and onward borne
So I might prove myself that sea
Of passion which I needs must be I
Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint,
And my style infirm, and its figures faint,
All the critics say, and more blame yet,
And not one angry would you get I
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