The Average Man, If He Meddles With

Even When Poetry Has A Meaning, As It Usually Has, It May Be Inadvisable To Draw It Out. Perfect Understanding Will Sometimes Almost Extinguish Pleasure.

Why, If 'tis Dancing You Would Be, There's Brisker Pipes Than Poetry. Say, For What Were Hop-yards Meant, Or Why Was Burton Built On Trent? Oh Many A Peer Of England Brews Livelier Liquor Than The Muse, And Malt Does More Than Milton Can To Justify God's Ways To Man. Ale, Man, Ale's The Stuff To Drink For Fellows Whom It Hurts To Think: Look Into The Pewter Pot To See The World As The World's Not.

On Occasions, After Drinking A Pint Of Beer At Luncheon, There Would Be A Flow Into My Mind With Sudden And Unaccountable Emotion, Sometimes A Line Or Two Of Verse, Sometimes A Whole Stanza, Accompanied, Not Preceded By A Vague Notion Of The Poem Which They Were Destined To Form A Part Of.... I Say Bubble Up Because, So Far As I Could Make Out, The Source Of The Suggestions Thus Proffered To The Brain Was The Pit Of The Stomach.

Nature, Not Content With Denying Him The Ability To Think, Has Endowed Him With The Ability To Write.

Hope Lies To Mortals And Most Believe Her, But Man's Deceiver Was Never Mine.