<h2><SPAN name="page71"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>DISILLUSIONED<br/> <span class="GutSmall">BY AN EX-ENTHUSIAST</span></h2>
<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Oh</span>, that my soul its
gods could see<br/>
As years ago they seemed to me<br/>
When first I painted them;<br/>
Invested with the circumstance<br/>
Of old conventional romance:<br/>
Exploded theorem!</p>
<p class="poetry">The bard who could, all men above,<br/>
Inflame my soul with songs of love,<br/>
And, with his verse, inspire<br/>
The craven soul who feared to die<br/>
With all the glow of chivalry<br/>
And old heroic fire;</p>
<p class="poetry">I found him in a beerhouse tap<br/>
Awaking from a gin-born nap,<br/>
With pipe and sloven dress;<br/>
Amusing chums, who fooled his bent,<br/>
With muddy, maudlin sentiment,<br/>
And tipsy foolishness!</p>
<p class="poetry">The novelist, whose painting pen<br/>
To legions of fictitious men<br/>
A real existence lends,<br/>
Brain-people whom we rarely fail,<br/>
Whene’er we hear their names, to hail<br/>
As old and welcome friends;</p>
<p class="poetry">I found in clumsy snuffy suit,<br/>
In seedy glove, and blucher boot,<br/>
Uncomfortably big.<br/>
Particularly commonplace,<br/>
With vulgar, coarse, stockbroking face,<br/>
And spectacles and wig.</p>
<p class="poetry">My favourite actor who, at will,<br/>
With mimic woe my eyes could fill<br/>
With unaccustomed brine:<br/>
A being who appeared to me<br/>
(Before I knew him well) to be<br/>
A song incarnadine;</p>
<p class="poetry">I found a coarse unpleasant man<br/>
With speckled chin—unhealthy, wan—<br/>
Of self-importance full:<br/>
Existing in an atmosphere<br/>
That reeked of gin and pipes and beer—<br/>
Conceited, fractious, dull.</p>
<p class="poetry">The warrior whose ennobled name<br/>
Is woven with his country’s fame,<br/>
Triumphant over all,<br/>
I found weak, palsied, bloated, blear;<br/>
His province seemed to be, to leer<br/>
At bonnets in Pall Mall.</p>
<p class="poetry">Would that ye always shone, who write,<br/>
Bathed in your own innate limelight,<br/>
And ye who battles wage,<br/>
Or that in darkness I had died<br/>
Before my soul had ever sighed<br/>
To see you off the stage!</p>
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