Figure me to yourself, I pray—

   A man of my peculiar cut—

Apart from dancing and deray, [185]

   Into an Alpine valley shut;

Shut in a kind of damned Hotel,

   Discountenanced by God and man;

The food?—Sir, you would do as well

   To cram your belly full of bran.

The company?  Alas, the day

   That I should dwell with such a crew,

With devil anything to say,

   Nor any one to say it to!

The place?  Although they call it Platz,

   I will be bold and state my view;

It’s not a place at all—and that’s

   The bottom verity, my Dew.

There are, as I will not deny,

   Innumerable inns; a road;

Several Alps indifferent high;

   The snow’s inviolable abode;

Eleven English parsons, all

   Entirely inoffensive; four

True human beings—what I call

   Human—the deuce a cipher more;

A climate of surprising worth;

   Innumerable dogs that bark;

Some air, some weather, and some earth;

   A native race—God save the mark!—

A race that works, yet cannot work,

   Yodels, but cannot yodel right,

Such as, unhelp’d, with rusty dirk,

   I vow that I could wholly smite.

A river that from morn to night

   Down all the valley plays the fool;

Not once she pauses in her flight,

   Nor knows the comfort of a pool;

But still keeps up, by straight or bend,

   The selfsame pace she hath begun—

Still hurry, hurry, to the end—

   Good God, is that the way to run?

If I a river were, I hope

   That I should better realise

The opportunities and scope

   Of that romantic enterprise.

I should not ape the merely strange,

   But aim besides at the divine;

And continuity and change

   I still should labour to combine.

Here should I gallop down the race,

   Here charge the sterling [186] like a bull;

There, as a man might wipe his face,

   Lie, pleased and panting, in a pool.

But what, my Dew, in idle mood,

   What prate I, minding not my debt?

What do I talk of bad or good?

   The best is still a cigarette.

Me whether evil fate assault,

   Or smiling providences crown—

Whether on high the eternal vault

   Be blue, or crash with thunder down—

I judge the best, whate’er befall,

   Is still to sit on one’s behind,

And, having duly moistened all,

   Smoke with an unperturbèd mind.