Anacreontics Author:Charles Astor Bristed Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: To y. T. y. (FOR NOT ATTENDING HIS ARTISTS' RECEPTION (April, 12, 1866.) "I AM lying, Johnston, lying—not like " Gem- men of the Press," Although in ' ... more »Sheets ' I'm lying—that's because I cannot dress. I have got the Rheumatism very badly in one leg, Worse than any other ism. and I cannot move a peg, And I lie and groan in anguish, and can hardly even read, And my shattered spirits languish, and I'm very weak indeed. I am lying, Johnston, lying—so I cannot walk to thee, To the glorious punchifying, where the merry fellows be ; Where the painters all are tippling the most picturesque of punches; In its gentle eddy rippling through the jolliest of lunches; Where those tales of Bayard Taylor's with Herodotus compete, And Cranch will sing the Sailors who their comrade tried to eat. How I wonder what you fellows think or speak of me to-day ! Will it worry Dr. Bellows if Carl Benson is away, Will it make Dick Hunt less jolly, render Bier- stadt's speech more slow, Will our Jack look melancholy 'cause his cousin cannot show ?' Will Leutze say " poor fellow!" how I wish we had him here ?" Or the eye of Beard grow mellow with a sympathetic tear ? Eugene Benson's up the country, to enjoy what he calls Spring, Though I think it great effront'ry here to speak of such a thing, We have got no Spring (poor devils) in this wretched Western clime, When the Summer's hottest revels follow close on Winter's rime; If we had a Spring like Europe, I should not be on my back, With exceedingly obscure hope of soon getting up, alack! Ancient Greeks and Romans used at their banquets to recline ; And the fashion then amused; but their taste is nowise mine; And I've heard that Fanny Kemble lay upon her back at s...« less