Look at me and you shall see
The ghastliest of the ghastly;
The eyes that have watched a thousand years,
The forehead lined with a thousand cares,
The seaweed-character of hairs!--
You shall see and you shall see,
Or you may hear, as I can feel,
When the winds batter, how these _parchments_ clatter,
And the beautiful tenor that's ever ringing
When thro' the _Seaweed_ the breeze is singing:
And you should know, I know a great deal,
When the _bacchi arcanum_ I clutch and gripe,
I know a great deal of wind and weather
By hearing my own cheeks slap together
A-pulling up a pipe.
I believe--and I conceive
I'm an authority
In all things ghastly,
First for tenuity
For stringiness secondly,
And sallowness lastly--
I say I believe a cadaverous man
Who would live as _long_ and as _lean_ as he can
Should live entirely on bacchi--
On the bacchic ambrosia entirely feed him;
When living thus, so little lack I,
So easy am I, I'll never heed him
Who anything seeketh beyond the _Leaf:_
For, what with mumbling pipe-ends freely,
And snuffing the ashes now and then,
I give it as my firm belief
One might go living on genteelly
To the age of an antediluvian.
This from the king to each spectral _Grim_--
Mind, we address no _bibbing smoker_!
Tell not us 'tis as broad as it's long,
We've no breadth more than a leathern thong
Tanned--or a tarnished poker:
Ye are also lank and slim?--
Your king he comes of an ancient _line_
Which "length without breadth" the Gods define,
And look ye follow him!
Lanky lieges! the Gods one day
Will cut off this _line_, as geometers say,
Equal to any given line:--
PI,--PE--their hands divine
Do more than we can see:
They cut off every length of clay
Really in a most extraordinary way--
They fill your bowls up--Dutch C'naster,
Shag, York River--fill 'em faster,
Fill 'em faster up, I say.
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