Page:The Bab Ballads.djvu/68

My favourite actor who, at will,
With mimic woe my eyes could fill
With unaccustomed brine:
A being who appeared to me
(Before I knew him well) to be
A song incarnadine;

I found a coarse unpleasant man
With speckled chin—unhealthy, wan—
Of self-importance full:
Existing in an atmosphere
That reeked of gin and pipes and beer—
Conceited, fractious, dull.

The warrior whose ennobled name
Is woven with his country's fame,
Triumphant over all,
I found weak, palsied, bloated, blear;
His province seemed to be, to leer
At bonnets in Pall Mall.

Would that ye always shone, who write,
Bathed in your own innate lime-light,
And ye who battles wage,
Or that in darkness I had died
Before my soul had ever sighed
To see you off the stage!