The Impatient Moon

And what am I, the moon? Tell me thou great all-seeing!Why was I born to be a miserable being?I'd rather be a slave, by earthly tyrants driven,Than be a midnight king, and sit enthroned in heaven.A beggar rather be, in rags and tatters roving,Than thro' these fields of blue, in silver vestments moving.I'd rather eat the bread of poverty, tho' bitter,Than drink the fragrant dews of all the stars that glitter.Wilt thou not hear my prayer? O thou that hear'st the growlingOf many an angry bard—of many a dog that's howling;Bards! bards! What bards? They pour their cataracts of versesHeartless—they have no heart—I hear, with silent curses;They speak, they spout to me, in folly's inebriety,As if I were not tired—how tired, of such society!True I am pale and wan, I sicken in the sadness,Of all these maddened sounds, O would it were mute madness!I'd rather hear the screams of discord's many daughters,Or cries of slaughtered swine rebelling 'gainst their slaughters.But now and then amidst these horrors dark and horrid,I see a spark of light burst from a minstrel's forehead;A poet true who comes, his genial music proffering,And then my face shines bright and brighter at the offering;I listen to the strains complacent and enjoying,Which make the dissonance but tenfold more annoying;O those vile sounds—they spread—they propagate like rabbits,Are there no laws to check their procreative habits?I'm left no night in peace, I hear the eternal tune, O!And these impostors cry, "We're singing to the moon, O!"But see, another comes, the monster dares to face me,Stretches his apish arms, and says he would embrace me:The zany looks to heaven, and fancies I will hear him,When not a fool on earth is fool enough to bear him;And then he sighs and sighs, half terrified, half tipsy,And in my presence stands, like a convicted gipsy;Asks me—asks me, the moon!—to help him to discoverWhat is the reason he is a rejected lover?I'll tell him once for all—he shall not be mistaken,"You had the grill in charge, you know, and spoilt the bacon!Did you not give a hot potato to the woman,With which she burnt her mouth—and was it not inhuman?Now go, and wail and weep, in moody melancholy—Sit in the stocks of shame, repenting of your folly;List to the oracle, thou dunce! if I can make theeHear my last word—'tis this, 'tis this—The devil take thee!"