Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister

• SOTSC: Stanza 1

   Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!

     Water your damned flower-pots, do!

  If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,

     God's blood, would not mine kill you!

  What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?

     Oh, that rose has prior claims--

  Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?

     Hell dry you up with its flames!
• SOTSC: Stanza 2

  At the meal we sit together;

  Salve tibi!I must hear

  Wise talk of the kind of weather,

     Sort of season, time of year:

  Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely

  Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt;

  What's the Latin name for "parsley"?

  What's the Greek name for "swine's snout"?
• SOTSC: Stanza 3

  Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,

     Laid with care on our own shelf!

  With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,

     And a goblet for ourself,

  Rinsed like something sacrificial

     Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps--

  Marked with L. for our initial!

     (He-he! There his lily snaps!)
• SOTSC: Stanza 4

  Saint,forsooth! While Brown Dolores

     Squats outside the Convent bank

  With Sanchicha, telling stories,

     Steeping tresses in the tank,

  Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,

     --Can't I see his dead eye glow,

  Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?

     (That is, if he'd let it show!)
• SOTSC: Stanza 5

  When he finishes refection,

     Knife and fork he never lays

  Cross-wise, to my recollection,

     As do I, in Jesu's praise.

  I the Trinity illustrate,

     Drinking watered orange pulp--

  In three sips the Arian frustrate;

     While he drains his at one gulp!
• SOTSC: Stanza 6

  Oh, those melons! if he's able

     We're to have a feast; so nice!

  One goes to the Abbot's table,

     All of us get each a slice.

  How go on your flowers? None double?

     Not one fruit-sort can you spy?

  Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble,

     Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
• SOTSC: Stanza 7


  There's a great text in Galatians,

     Once you trip on it, entails

  Twenty-nine district damnations,

     One sure, if another fails;

  If I trip him just a-dying,

     Sure of heaven as sure can be,

  Spin him round and send him flying

     Off to hell, a Manichee?
• SOTSC: Stanza 8

  Or, my scrofulous French novel

     On grey paper with blunt type!

  Simply glance at it, you grovel

     Hand and foot in Belial's gripe;

  If I double down its pages

     At the woeful sixteenth print,

  When he gathers his greengages,

     Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
• SOTSC: Stanza 9


  Or, there's Satan!--one might venture

     Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave

  Such a flaw in the indenture

     As he'd miss till, past retrieve,

  Blasted lay that rose-acacia

     We're so proud of!Hy, Zy, Hine...

  'St, there's Vespers!Plena gratia

  Ave, Virgo!Gr-r-r--you swine!