You're but the shadow of a man,
With shallow brain and half a heart,
Too weak and vain for life's campaign,
A true King Arthur's counterpart:
Not Mallory's hero, stern and rough,
But that insufferable bore,
That preaching, plaster, bloodless saint,
Anæmic girls so much adore:
That simulacrum stuffed with bran,
Whom Tennyson (so much a bard
He was so much the less a man,)
Most sadly in the making marred.
Thomas Nehemiah Briggs,
Is't possible the grapes were sour,
Which reached, you'd quickly said Goodbye
To your sweet maiden in her flower?
Why all this heat and fury if
Your self-love had not felt a wound?
You seek to hide a blow to pride,
Or why so angry and untuned?
Trust me, Nehemiah Briggs,
You know naught of a woman's soul,
Which, light and fickle though it seem,
A true man always can control:
She gives herself without reserve
When once her true lord she discovers,
But 'tis not such as you deserve
To be her favoured friends or lovers.
75
