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Title: "Brevis Esse Laboro"
Author: Charles Lamb [
More Titles by Lamb]
"ONE DIP"
(1830)
Much speech obscures the sense; the soul of wit
Is brevity: our tale one proof of it.
Poor Balbulus, a stammering invalid,
Consults the doctors, and by them is bid
To try sea-bathing, with this special heed,
"One Dip was all his malady did need;
More than that one his certain death would be."
Now who so nervous or so shook as he,
For Balbulus had never dipped before?
Two well-known dippers at the Broadstairs' shore,
Stout, sturdy churls, have stript him to the skin,
And naked, cold, and shivering plunge him in.
Soon he emerges, with scarce breath to say,
"I'm to be dip--dip--dipt--." "We know it," they
Reply; expostulation seemed in vain,
And over ears they souse him in again,
And up again he rises, his words trip,
And falter as before. Still "dip--dip--dip"--
And in again he goes with furious plunge,
Once more to rise; when, with a desperate lunge,
At length he bolts these words out, "Only once!"
The villains crave his pardon. Had the dunce
But aimed at these bare words the rogues had found him,
But striving to be prolix, they half drowned him.
[The end]
Charles Lamb's poem: "Brevis Esse Laboro"
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