When I Have Heard Him Talking To

To Be Shelterless And Alone In The Open Country, Hearing The Wind Moan And Watching For Day Through The Whole Long Weary Night; To Listen To The Falling Rain, And Crouch For Warmth Beneath The Lee Of Some Old Barn Or Rick, Or In The Hollow Of A Tree; Are Dismal Things - But Not So Dismal As The Wandering Up And Down Where Shelter Is, And Beds And Sleepers Are By Thousands; A Houseless Rejected Creature.

The Plain Rule Is To Do Nothing In The Dark, To Be A Party To Nothing Underhanded Or Mysterious, And Never To Put His Foot Where He Cannot See The Ground.

When They Took A Young Man Into Tellson's London House, They Hid Him Somewhere Till He Was Old. They Kept Him In A Dark Place, Like A Cheese, Until He Had The Full Tellson Flavour And Blue-mould Upon Him. Then Only Was He Permitted To Be Seen, Spectacularly Poring Over Large Books, And Casting His Breeches And Gaiters Into The General Weight Of The Establishment.

When A Man Bleeds Inwardly, It Is A Dangerous Thing For Himself; But When He Laughs Inwardly, It Bodes No Good To Other People.

On Summer Evenings, When Every Flower, And Tree, And Bird, Might Have Better Addressed My Soft Young Heart, I Have In My Day Been Caught In The Palm Of A Female Hand By The Crown, Have Been Violently Scrubbed From The Neck To The Roots Of The Hair As A Purification For The Temple, And Have Then Been Carried Off Highly Charged With Saponaceous Electricity, To Be Steamed Like A Potato In The Unventilated Breath Of The Powerful Boanerges Boiler And His Congregation, Until What Small Mind I Had, Was Quite Steamed Out Of Me