By O—r K—m. <br />Wake! for the closed Pavilion doors have kept <br />Their silence while the white-eyed Kaffir slept, <br />And wailed the Nightingale with 'Jug, jug, jug!' <br />Whereat, for empty cup, the White Rose wept. <br />Enter with me where yonder door hangs out <br />Its Red Triangle to a world of drought, <br />Inviting to the Palace of the Djinn, <br />Where Death, Aladdin, waits as Chuckerout. <br />Methought, last night, that one in suit of woe <br />Stood by the Tavern-door and whispered, 'Lo, <br />The Pledge departed, what avails the Cup? <br />Then take the Pledge and let the Wine-cup go.' <br />But I: 'For every thirsty soul that drains <br />This Anodyne of Thought its rim contains— <br />Free-will the can, Necessity the must, <br />Pour off the must, and, see, the can remains. <br />'Then, pot or glass, why label it 'With Care'? <br />Or why your Sheepskin with my Gourd compare? <br />Lo! here the Bar and I the only Judge:— <br />O, Dog that bit me, I exact an hair!' <br />We are the Sum of things, who jot our score <br />With Caesar's clay behind the Tavern door: <br />And Alexander's armies—where are they, <br />But gone to Pot—that Pot you push for more? <br />And this same Jug I empty, could it speak, <br />Might whisper that itself had been a Beak <br />And dealt me Fourteen Days 'without the Op.'— <br />Your Worship, see, my lip is on your cheek. <br />Yourself condemned to three score years and ten, <br />Say, did you judge the ways of other men? <br />Why, now, sir, you are hourly filled with wine, <br />And has the clay more licence now than then? <br />Life is a draught, good sir; its brevity <br />Gives you and me our measures, and thereby <br />Has docked your virtue to a tankard's span, <br />And left of my criterion—a Cri'!<br /><br />Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/measure-for-measure-3/
