Choice apples, red or lilac, I now eat
And soon shall spew. I like them not – no whit!
Although my winter's store they quite have filled
And bruised each other like the Trojan throng
They now do falter in their plenitude
Execrable! My servant, come! Why wait'st?

I could not find the bus of which you spake,
Long though I searched withal; my closest whim
To none I met upon my search I told
To none but those whom harmony betrays
The spoken bus.

                           Thou useless fragment! Thou thug!
Who speak'st of 'bus' when knowing less than I.
Thou vilest boil, who shut'st the door of use
Upon the face of any who might dare
A dresden Noah – imminent Larousse
Of western hist'ry – see my knowing gaze
As here and there, unkennelled yet, it falls,
And uttering betimes a strangled sob
Redeems, most utterly, my fractured dreams.

O master! Be thou not unduly harsh
Throw no more spanners at my legs, I beg,
Nor wield that crowbar more abune my neck
In breaking twice what Nature sundered first
To heal in sacred fire. My bones are charmed,
And shall not snap again without recoil!
But if to wound me more you dare attempt
I shall avenge my silent suffering
In rotten fruity cargos, tepid thrush!

O, pardon me, ye gods! In sickness dire
I shun my dire mistakes, as I have wrought
All kind of evil deeds, which now I rue
As doth the vengeful Harris – prolix he!
And as my rival Schiller, whom now I flee.