William Schwenck Gilbert (Уильям Швенк Гильберт)
The Bab Ballads. Disillusioned
BY AN EX-ENTHUSIAST Oh, that my soul its gods could see As years ago they seemed to me When first I painted them; Invested with the circumstance Of old conventional romance: Exploded theorem! The bard who could, all men above, Inflame my soul with songs of love, And, with his verse, inspire The craven soul who feared to die With all the glow of chivalry And old heroic fire; I found him in a beerhouse tap Awaking from a gin-born nap, With pipe and sloven dress; Amusing chums, who fooled his bent, With muddy, maudlin sentiment, And tipsy foolishness! The novelist, whose painting pen To legions of fictitious men A real existence lends, Brain-people whom we rarely fail, Whene’er we hear their names, to hail As old and welcome friends; I found in clumsy snuffy suit, In seedy glove, and blucher boot, Uncomfortably big. Particularly commonplace, With vulgar, coarse, stockbroking face, And spectacles and wig. 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 limelight, And ye who battles wage, Or that in darkness I had died Before my soul had ever sighed To see you off the stage!
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