Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

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1. Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
2. Water your damned flower-pots, do!
3. If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
4. God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
5. What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
6. Oh, that rose has prior claims—
7. Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
8. Hell dry you up with its flames!
9.  
10. ii.
11. At the meal we sit together:
12. Salve tibi! I must hear
13. Wise talk of the kind of weather
14. Sort of season, time of year:
15. Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
16. Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
17. What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
18. What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?
19.  
20. iii.
21. Phew! We'll have our platter burnished,
22. Laid with care on our own shelf!
23. With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
24. And a goblet for ourself,
25. Rinsed like something sacrificial
26. Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps—
27. Marked with L. for our initial!
28. (He-he! There his lily snaps!)
29.  
30. iv.
31. Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
32. Squats outside the Convent bank,
33. With Sanchicha, telling stories,
34. Steeping tresses in the tank,
35. Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs
36. —Can't I see his dead eye glow
37. Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
38. That is, if he'd let it show.
39.  
40. v.
41. When he finishes refection,
42. Knife and fork across he lays
43. Never, to my recollection,
44. As do I, in Jesu's praise.
45. I, the Trinity illustrate,
46. Drinking watered orange-pulp;
47. In three sips the Arian frustrate;
48. While he drains his at one gulp!
49.  
50. vi.
51. Oh, those melons! If he's able
52. We're to have a feast; so nice!
53. One goes to the Abbot's table,
54. All of us get each a slice.
55. How go on your flowers? None double?
56. Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
57. Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble,
58. Keep 'em close-nipped on the sly!
59.  
60. vii.
61. There's a great text in Galatians,
62. Once you trip on it, entails
63. Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
64. One sure, if another fails.
65. If I trip him just a-dying,
66. Sure of Heaven as sure can be,
67. Spin him round and send him flying
68. Off to Hell a Manichee?
69.  
70. viii.
71. Or, my scrofulous French novel,
72. On grey paper with blunt type!
73. Simply glance at it, you grovel
74. Hand and foot in Belial's gripe.
75. If I double down its pages
76. At the woeful sixteenth print,
77. When he gathers his greengages,
78. Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
79.  
80. ix.
81. Or, the Devil!—one might venture
82. Pledge one's soul yet slily leave
83. Such a flaw in the indenture
84. As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
85. Blasted lay that rose-acacia
86. We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .
87. St, there's Vespers! Plena gratiâ
88. Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r—you swine!