What dreams were these? What stars and planets these?
What aery nothings flee before my gaze,
As through my mind there course absurd recalls
The mumbling of my mistress' death; complaints
Of woes more sudden than the scallop's death
And of her breasts! Those pamplemousses, vast
Unwholesome round tumescences of fat,
Whose sight made strong men blench ... But see, who stirs?

What dreams are these? As if aboard some sloop
In sinuous undulations on the sea
I fancied I was borne, my breast the sail
Which wavered steadfast in th'enraptured breeze,
While 'twixt my knees a rudder wove the main,
Held fast by stolid steersman – him I craved
As doth the night the day, or more, iwis,
As doth the day the moon's peroxide tan
When naughty Phoebus creeps beneath the sheets
To make the strongman giggle. But, who stirs?

What dreams? I saw upon a ribald pard
Three damozels – but who they were, or why
They shrieked in dire cacophonous repose
I cannot say. It was not wholesome – no!
Less wholesome than a festering gazelle,
A pocketful of plankton, or Magee.
And yet within this dream I saw a hole
Wherein there lay no coney, brock, nor jug
– It was an empty hole! No whit of thing
No coptic cup nor amaranthine bidet
Lay housed within: an empty, airless nook –
And down I fell and then I was no more.

Colquhoun? Thou wight, the house of health?
No whit! Let surgeons anputate, and nurses nurse,
Let prophylactic pythons bind thee round
We cannot save thee? No?

                           Alas!

                                      Alas!