Impetuously I Sprang From Bed, Long Before Lunch Was Up, That I Might Drain The Dizzy Dew From Day'S First Golden Cup. In Swift Devouring Ecstacy Each Toil In Turn Was Done; I Had Done Lying On The Lawn Three Minutes After One. For Me, As Mr. Wordsworth Says, The Duties Shine Like Stars; I Formed My Uncle'S Character, Decreasing His Cigars. But Could My Kind Engross Me? No! Stern Art--What Sons Escape Her? Soon I Was Drawing Gladstone'S Nose On Scraps Of Blotting Paper. Then On--To Play One-Fingered Tunes Upon My Aunt'S Piano. In Short, I Have A Headlong Soul, I Much Resemble Hanno. (Forgive The Entrance Of The Not Too Cogent Carthaginian. It May Have Been To Make A Rhyme; I Lean To That Opinion). Then My Great Work Of Book Research Till Dusk I Took In Hand-- The Forming Of A Final, Sound Opinion On _The Strand_. But When I Quenched The Midnight Oil, And Closed _The Referee_, Whose Thirty Volumes Folio I Take To Bed With Me, I Had A Rather Funny Dream, Intense, That Is, And Mystic; I Dreamed That, With One Leap And Yell, The World Became Artistic. The Shopmen, When Their Souls Were Still, Declined To Open Shops-- And Cooks Recorded Frames Of Mind In Sad And Subtle Chops. The Stars Were Weary Of Routine: The Trees In The Plantation Were Growing Every Fruit At Once, In Search Of A Sensation. The Moon Went For A Moonlight Stroll, And Tried To Be A Bard, And Gazed Enraptured At Itself: I Left It Trying Hard. The Sea Had Nothing But A Mood Of 'Vague Ironic Gloom,' With Which T'Explain Its Presence In My Upstairs Drawing-Room. The Sun Had Read A Little Book That Struck Him With A Notion: He Drowned Himself And All His Fires Deep In The Hissing Ocean. Then All Was Dark, Lawless, And Lost: I Heard Great Devilish Wings: I Knew That Art Had Won, And Snapt The Covenant Of Things. I Cried Aloud, And I Awoke, New Labours In My Head. I Set My Teeth, And Manfully Began To Lie In Bed. Toiling, Rejoicing, Sorrowing, So I My Life Conduct. Each Morning See Some Task Begun, Each Evening See It Chucked. But Still, In Sudden Moods Of Dusk, I Hear Those Great Weird Wings, Feel Vaguely Thankful To The Vast Stupidity Of Things.