by Robert Browning.
Originally published in Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany (Andrew Spottiswoode) vol.1 (1845).
1.
My heart sunk with our claret-flask,
Just now, beneath the heavy sedges
That serve this pond's black face for mask;
And still at yonder broken edges
Of the hole, where up the bubbles glisten,
After my heart I look and listen.
2.
Our laughing little flask, compelled
Through depth to depth more bleak and shady;
As when, both arms beside her held,
Feet straightened out, some gay French lady
Is caught up from life's light and motion,
And dropped into death's silent ocean!
Up jumped Tokay on our table,
Like a pigmy castle-warder,
Dwarfish to see, but stout and able,
Arms and accoutrements all in order;
And fierce he looked north; then, wheeling south,
Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth,
Cocked his flap-hat with the tosspot-feather.
Twisted his thumb in his red moustache,
Gingled his huge brass spurs together.
Tightened his waist with its Buda sash,
And then with an impudence naught could abash
Shrugged his hump-shoulder,
To tell the beholder,
For twenty such knaves he should laugh but the bolder;
And so, with his sword-hilt gallantly jutting,
And dexter hand on his haunch abutting,
Went the little man from Ausbruch, strutting!