83 
 
 
 
 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT 
 
(AN ESSAY IN TACTICS) 
 
“ A FEMALE eunuch-a stale courtesan 
With a Jew’s hook, fat lips, and goggle eyes 
Wrinkled with grime and lust—so any man 
May maul you ;  there’s a scarcity of vice !   
A woman’s soul is in her ovaries ;   
Cut those, that flies.  O salt and shallow pan 
Of verminous moisture !—bathe in thee, forsooth ?   
Age and consummate pox, avoid my youth ! ” 
 
I would have loved you—so I love to love— 
Wrapped you in beauty !  Lucid gauze of rime 
Had made your limbs go glimmering down through  
time, 
A gracious ghost ;  the soiled and draggled dove 
Of Venus should be spurned, and you, my swan, 
Superbly floated on the giant stream 
Of fame, its crown and culmination, dream 
Most inaccessible, meditated on 
In vain by the world’s greatest lovers.  Yet 
Your lazy lewdness happens to forget