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Kenneth Slessor - The Nabob
Work rating: Low

(To the memory of William Hickey, Esq.)
 COMING out of India with ten thousand a year 
 Exchanged for flesh and temper, a dry Faust 
 Whose devil barters with digestion, has he paid dear 
 For dipping his fingers in the Roc`s valley? 
 Who knows? It`s certain that he owns a rage, 
 A face like shark-skin, full of Yellow Jack, 
 And that unreckoning tyranny of age 
 That calls for turtles` eggs in Twickenham. 
 Sometimes, by moonlight, in a barge he`ll float 
 Whilst hirelings blow their skulking flageolets, 
 Served by a Rajah in a golden coat 
 With pigeon-pie . . . Madeira . . . and Madeira . . . 
 Or in his Bon de Paris with silver frogs 
 He rolls puff-bellied in an equipage, 
 Elegant chariot, through a gulf of fogs 
 To dine on dolphin-steak with Post-Captains. 
 Who knows? There are worse things than steak, perhaps, 
 Worse things than oyster-sauces and tureens 
 And worlds of provender like painted maps 
 Pricked out with ports of claret and pitchcocked eels, 
 And hubbubs of billiard-matches, burnt champagne, 
 Beautiful ladies "of the establishment" 
 Always in tempers, or melting out again, 
 Bailiffs and Burgundy and writs of judgment— 
 Thus to inhabit huge, lugubrious halls 
 Damp with the steam of entrees, glazed with smoke, 
 Raw drinking, greasy eating, bussing and brawls, 
 Drinking and eating and bursting into bed-chambers. 
 But, in the end, one says farewell to them; 
 And if he`d curse to-day—God damn your blood!— 
 Even his curses I`d not altogether condemn, 
 Not altogether scorn; and if phantoms ate— 
 Hickey, I`d say, sit down, pull up, set to: 
 Here`s knife and fork, there`s wine, and there`s a barmaid. 
 Let us submerge ourselves in onion-soup, 
 Anything but this "damned profession of writing".
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