"All my soul is slowly melting, all my brain is softening fast, And I know that I'll be taken to the Yarr bend at last. For at night from fitful slumbers I awaken with a start, Murmuring of steak and onions, babbling of apple-tart. While to me the Poet's cloudland a gigantic kitchen seems, And those mislaid table-napkins haunt me even in my dreams Is this right? — Ye sages tell me! — Does a man live but to eat? Is there nothing worth enjoying but one's miserable meat? Is the mightiest task of genius but to swallow buttered beans, And has man but been created to demolish pork and greens? Is there no unfed Hereafter, where the round of chewing stops? Is the atmosphere of heaven clammy with perpetual chops?"
Marcus Clarke

January 1, 1970