Ah, alas! it is over forever!
⁠Has the climate — which most of us kills —
Settled thee? Say, again shall I never
⁠Read thy name in large type in the bills?

Must I stand at the door with my shilling,
⁠But to hear thy too pitiful tale?
Is it useless to urge that I’m willing —
⁠Quite — to put down one more "for the whale?"

Alas, yes, 'tis too true! Though they caught thee,
⁠Prepared for thee honors untold, —
P'raps with Pongo to dine might have taught thee,—
⁠They couldn't quite cope with thy cold.

And though M.D.'s abound in thy quarter,
⁠Alas, what could their science suggest?
They might say, "Put its tail in hot water,—
⁠Try a plaster or two on its chest.

"Such a cold! — all our practice can't match it;
⁠It floods diagnosis with doubt.
Where on earth did our young patient catch it!
⁠Has it been in the water — or out?

"We can picture an elephant wheezing,
⁠Or a Python knocked over by cramp,
But a whale! — we can't fancy that sneezing,
⁠With a pulse at a hundred — from damp!"

So I wonder, at human invention
⁠If thy too fishy nature took fright,
When each minute, with kindest intention,
⁠Some one soused thee all day — and all night!

If that voyage across the Atlantic, —
⁠Meant to handsomely butter thy bread, —
Made thee long for a voice to cry, frantic,
⁠"Oh! do stop, I’ve a cold in my head!"

Such a cold! Ah, too late they all rue it!
⁠And denounce thy berth minus a lid, —
With a douche! For if that didn't do it,
⁠'Tis not easy to tell thee what did!

Ah! but there, — all is over forever!
⁠Though thy tank daily empties and fills,
I shall never again — I shall never
⁠Read thy name in large type in the bills!

Lo! I am weary of all, —
⁠Of men, and their love and their hate;
I have been long enough life's thrall,
⁠And the toy of a tyrant fate.

I would have nothing but rest,
⁠I would not struggle again;
Take me now to thy breast,
⁠Earth, sweet mother of men.

Hide me, and let me sleep;
⁠Give me a lonely tomb,
So close and so dark and so deep,
⁠I shall hear no trumpet of doom.

There let me lie forgot,
⁠When the dead at its blast are gone;
Give me to hear it not,
⁠But only to slumber on.

This is the fate I crave,
⁠For I look to the end, and see,
If there be not rest in the grave,
⁠There will never be rest for me.

Soft on the lake's soft bosom we twain
⁠Float in the haze of a dim delight,
While the wavelets cradle the sleepless brain,
⁠And the eyes are glad of the lessening light,
⁠And the east with a fading glory is bright —
The lingering smile of a sun that is set —
⁠And the earth in its tender sorrow is dight,
And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet!

Oh! the mellow beam of the suns that wane,
⁠Of the joys, ah me! that are taking flight;
Oh, the sting of a rapture too near to pain,
⁠And of love that loveth imdeath's despite!
⁠But the hour is ours, and its beauty's might
Subdues our souls to a still regret,
⁠While the Blumlis-Alp unveils to the night,
And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet!

Now we set our prow to the land again,
⁠And our backs to those splendors ghostly white,
But a mirrored star with a watery train
⁠We hold in our wake as a golden kite;
⁠When we near the shore, with its darkening height,
And its darker shade on the waters set,
⁠Lo! the dim shade fleeth before our sight,
And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet!

From the jewelled circles where I indite
⁠This song, which my faithless tears make wet,
We trail the light till its jemmed rings smite
⁠The shadow, — that falleth! and spares us yet.