From a Bachelor’s Notebook
i.
Oho, the joys of bachelorhood!
The bed is wide; the food is good.
All has that harmony of one
Who’s lived but for himself alone.
The furniture: so spare.
The tables, shelves, and floors: so bare.
The only thing imbibed here
Is most high wisdom - and beer.
ii.
Sure I like the idea of nighttime study -
Lucubrations in some dim and narrow room
When poring over books to my soul I’d glean
Treasures mystic and transcendental powers.
But as it happens? Give me Goethe’s study,
The young, who once in Italy knew to spend
His nights on love - and as for that, who’d say
That it too wasn’t knowledge of a sort,
Perhaps the better, and if it spared his eyes,
No doubt it left him tired otherwise.
Caleb Videwes