| |
| COME 1 from busy haunts of men, | |
| With nature to commune, | |
| Which you, it seems, observe, and then | |
| Laugh out, like some buffoon. | |
| |
| You cease, and through the forest drear | 5 |
| I pace, with sense of awe; | |
| When once again upon my ear | |
| Breaks in your harsh guffaw. | |
| |
| I look aloft to yonder place, | |
| Where placidly you sit, | 10 |
| And tell you to your very face, | |
| I do not like your wit. | |
| |
| I ’m in no mood for blatant jest, | |
| I hate your mocking song, | |
| My weary soul demands the rest | 15 |
| Denied to it so long. | |
| |
| Besides, there passes through my brain | |
| The poet’s love of fame— | |
| Why should not an Australian strain | |
| Immortalize my name? | 20 |
| |
| And so I pace the forest drear, | |
| Filled with a sense of awe, | |
| When louder still upon my ear | |
| Breaks in your harsh guffaw. | |
| |
| Yet truly, Jackass, it may be, | 25 |
| My words are all unjust: | |
| You laugh at what you hear and see, | |
| And laugh because you must. | |
| |
| You’ve seen Man civilized and rude, | |
| Of varying race and creed, | 30 |
| The black-skinned savage almost nude, | |
| The Englishman in tweed. | |
| |
| And here the lubra oft has strayed, | |
| To rest beneath the boughs, | |
| Where now, perchance, some fair-haired maid | 35 |
| May hear her lover’s vows; | |
| |
| While you from yonder lofty height | |
| Have studied human ways, | |
| And, with a satirist’s delight, | |
| Dissected hidden traits. | 40 |
| |
| Laugh on, laugh on! Your rapturous shout | |
| Again on me intrudes; | |
| But I have found your secret out, | |
| O cynic of the woods! | |
| |
| Well! I confess, grim mocking elf, | 45 |
| Howe’er I rhapsodize, | |
| That I am more in love with self | |
| Than with the earth or skies. | |
| |
| So I will lay the epic by, | |
| That I had just begun: | 50 |
| Why should I scribble? Let me lie | |
| And bask here in the sun. | |
| |
| And let me own, were I endowed | |
| With your fine humorous sense, | |
| I, too, should laugh—ay, quite as loud, | 55 |
| At all Man’s vain pretence. | |
