Page 20 - Poetry-Whimsy

Bless’d Hour

O hour of all hours the most bless’d upon earth,
Bless’d hour of our dinners! The land of his birth;
The face of his first love; the bills that he owes;
The twaddle of friends, and the venom of foes;
The sermon he heard when to church he last went;
The money he borrowed, the money he spent—
All of these things a man, I believe, may forget,
And not be the worse for forgetting: But yet
Never, never, oh, never, earth’s luckiest sinner,
Hath unpunished forgotten the hour of his dinner:
Indigestion, that conscience of every bad stomach,
Shall relentlessly gnaw and pursue him with some ache
Or some pain; and trouble remorseless his best ease,
As the Furies once troubled the sleep of Orestes.
We may live without poetry, music, and art:
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends, we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
He may live without books—what is knowledge but grieving?
He may live without hope—what is hope but deceiving?
He may live without love—what is passion but pining?
But where is the man that can live without dining?

—(Godey’s, 1873)

“Man in this case most certainly means all mankind; for, to be
honest, woman is quite as averse (after twenty) to live without
dining as ever the nobler sex can be.”

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