924940Twelve P.M. — illustrations by Howard PyleWilliam Dean Howells
TWELVE P.M.
O get home from some scene of gayety,
Say a long dinner, and the laugh and joke,
And funny story, and tobacco smoke,
And all the not unkindly fatuousness
Of fellow-beings not better and not worse
Than others are, but gorged with course on course,
And drenched with wine; and with one's evening dress
To take off one's perfunctory smile, and be
Wholly and solely one's sheer self again—
Is like escaping from some dull, dumb pain;
And in the luxury of that relief,
It is, in certain sort and measure, as if
One had put off the body, and the whole
Illusion of life, and in one's naked soul
Confronted the eternal Verity.
