| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| The Dinner Hour |
| | | Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton (1831–91) |
| | | | | From “Lucile” |
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| O HOUR of all hours, the most blest upon earth, | |
| Blest hour of our dinners! | |
| The land of his birth; | |
| The face of his first love; the bills that he owes; | |
| The twaddle of friends, and venom of foes; | 5 |
| The sermon he heard when to church he last went; | |
| The money he borrow’d, the money he spent; | |
| All of these things a man, I believe, may forget, | |
| And not be the worse for forgetting; but yet | |
| Never, never, oh, never! earth’s luckiest sinner | 10 |
| Hath unpunish’d forgotten the hour of his dinner! | |
| Indigestion, that conscience of every bad stomach, | |
| Shall relentlessly gnaw and pursue him with some ache | |
| Or some pain; and trouble, remorseless, his best ease, | |
| As the Furies once troubled the sleep of Orestes. | 15 |
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| We may live without poetry, music, and art; | |
| We may live without conscience, and live without heart; | |
| We may live without friends; we may live without books; | |
| But civilized man cannot live without cooks. | |
| He may live without books,—what is knowledge but grieving? | 20 |
| He may live without hope,—what is hope but deceiving? | |
| He may live without love,—what is passion but pining? | |
| But where is the man that can live without dining? | |
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