HYPOCHONDRIACUS. By myself walking, When as I ruminate On my untoward fate, Black thoughts continually Dim cogitations Follow and haunt me, In my heart festering, In my ears whispering, "Thy friends are treacherous, "Thy foes are dangerous, "Thy dreams ominous." Fierce Anthropophagi, What scared St. Anthony, Hobgoblins, Lemures, Dreams of Antipodes, All dire illusions Causing confusions; Figments heretical, Scruples fantastical, Doubts diabolical, Abaddon vexeth me, Mahu perplexeth me, Lucifer teareth me Jesu! Maria! liberate nos ab his diris tenta tionibus Inimici. A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO. MAY the Babylonish curse If I can a passage see (Still the phrase is wide or scant) To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, yet love, thee so, The plain truth will seem to be And the passion to proceed More from a mistress than a weed. Sooty retainer to the vine, Bacchus' black servant, negro fine; Sorcerer, that mak'st us dote upon And, for thy pernicious sake, 'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay Much too in the female way, While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, That our worst foes cannot find us, And ill fortune, that would thwart us, While each man, thro' thy height'ning steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem, And all about us does express A Sicilian fruitfulness. Thou through such a mist dost shew us, Due to reasonable creatures, Liken'st us to fell Chimeras, Monsters that, who see us, fear us; Worse than Cerberus or Geryon, Or, who first lov'd a cloud, Ixion. Bacchus we know, and we allow His tipsy rites. But what art thou, That but by reflex can'st shew What his deity can do, As the false Egyptian spell Brother of Bacchus, later born, The old world was sure forlorn, Wanting thee, that aidest more The god's victories than before All his panthers, and the brawls Of his piping Bacchanals. These, as stale, we disallow, Or judge of thee meant: only thou His true Indian conquest art; And, for ivy round his dart, The reformed god now weaves A finer thyrsus of thy leaves. |