A LIKENESS. SOME people hang portraits up Adds the cousin, while John's corns ail. Or else, there's no wife in the case, Alone mid the other spoils Of youth,―masks, gloves and foils, And the chamois-horns (" shot in the Chablais ") And Sayers, our champion, the bruiser, And the little edition of Rabelais : Where a friend, with both hands in his pockets, And remark a good deal of Jane Lamb in it, All that I own is a print, Of a certain face, I never Saw elsewhere touch or trace of I keep my prints, an imbroglio, When somebody tries my claret, Talk about pencil and lyre, And the National Portrait Gallery : Then I exhibit my treasure. After we 've turned over twenty, And the debt of wonder my crony owes Is paid to my Marc Antonios, He stops me "Festina lente! What's that sweet thing there, the etching?" How my waistcoat-strings want stretching, How my cheeks grow red as tomatos, How my heart leaps! But hearts, after leaps, ache. "By the by, you must take, for a keepsake, That other, you praised, of Volpato's." The fool! would he try a flight further and say What was able to take his breath away, A face to lose youth for, to occupy age With the dream of, meet death with,—why, I'll not engage But that, half in a rapture and half in a rage, I should toss him the thing's self—“ 'Tis only a duplicate, A thing of no value! Take it, I supplicate!" |