Apparent Failure

10Only the Doric little Morgue!

11 The dead-house where you show your drowned:

12Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,

13 Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.

14One pays one's debt in such a case;

15 I plucked up heart and entered, — stalked,

16Keeping a tolerable face

17 Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked:

18 Let them! No Briton's to be balked!

19First came the silent gazers; next,

20 A screen of glass, we're thankful for;

21Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text,

22 The three men who did most abhor

23Their life in Paris yesterday,

24 So killed themselves: and now, enthroned

25Each on his copper couch, they lay

26 Fronting me, waiting to be owned.

27 I thought, and think, their sin's atoned.

28Poor men, God made, and all for that!

29 The reverence struck me; o'er each head

30Religiously was hung its hat,

31 Each coat dripped by the owner's bed,

32Sacred from touch: each had his berth,

33 His bounds, his proper place of rest,

34Who last night tenanted on earth

35 Some arch, where twelve such slept abreast, —

36 Unless the plain asphalt seemed best.

37How did it happen, my poor boy?

38 You wanted to be Buonaparte

39And have the Tuileries for toy,

40 And could not, so it broke your heart?

41You, old one by his side, I judge,

42 Were, red as blood, a socialist,

43A leveller! Does the Empire grudge

44 You've gained what no Republic missed?

45 Be quiet, and unclench your fist!

46And this — why, he was red in vain,

47 Or black, — poor fellow that is blue!

48What fancy was it, turned your brain?

49 Oh, women were the prize for you!

50Money gets women, cards and dice

51 Get money, and ill-luck gets just

52The copper couch and one clear nice

53 Cool squirt of water o'er your bust,

54 The right thing to extinguish lust!

55It's wiser being good than bad;

56 It's safer being meek than fierce:

57It's fitter being sane than mad.

58 My own hope is, a sun will pierce

59The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;

60 That, after Last, returns the First,

61Tho' a wide compass round be fetched;

62 That what began best, can't end worst,

63 Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.