What! here again, indomitable pest!
Thou plagu'st me like a pepper-temper'd sprite;
Thou makest me the butt of all thy spite,
And bitest me, and buzzest as in jest.
Ten times I've closed my heavy lids in vain
This early morn to court an hour of sleep;
For thou—tormentor!—constantly dost keep
Thy whizzing tones resounding through my brain,
Or lightest on my sensitive nose, and there
Thou trimm'st thy wings and shak'st thy legs of hair:
Ten times I've raised my hand in haste to smite,
But thou art off, and ere I lay my head
And fold mine arms in quiet on my bed,
Thou com'st again—and tak'st another bite.
As Uncle Toby says, “The world is wide
Enough for thee and me.” Then go, I pray,
And through this world do take some other way,
And let us travel no more side by side.
Go, live among the flowers; go anywhere;
Or to the empty sugar-hogshead go,
That standeth at the grocer's store below;
Go suit thy taste with any thing that's there.
There's his molasses-measure; there's his cheese,
And ham and herring:—What! will nothing please?
Presumptuous imp! then die!—But no! I'll smite
Thee not; for thou, perchance, art young in days,
And rather green as yet in this world's ways;
So live and suffer—age may set thee right.