Personal Pleasures Read Online Free PDF

Cambridge, but will be long, at this rate, in arriving at that learned town, for it scarcely seems to move. Sluggishly the weeds wave, and with them the gold and white chalices with their broad-leafed saucers. A phantom stream, a pale dream of green shadow and grey light. Alone in the dawn world, a pink climbing rose gives colour, a pure sharp note in a faint chromotone of greys.
    The east too grows rose-pink, beyond the grey pricks of the willow leaves. Drowsily I lie, and watch the sun rise to the clamour of the birds. When it looks above the pollarded head of the large willow on the opposite bank, I shall bathe.
    The river emerges from greyness into deep green colour and clear light. The sun tops the pollard. I throw off blankets and night clothes and slip from the bank into the cold stream. Spreading my arms wide, I let the slow flow carry me gently along through shadow and light, between long weedy strands that slimily embrace me as I drift by, between the bobbing white and gold cups and slippery juicy stems, beneath willows that brush my head with light leaves, beneath banks massed high with may, smelling sharp and sweet above the musky fragrance of the tall cow-parsley. Buttercup fields shine beyond those white banks; the chestnuts lift their candles high against the morning sky.
    But suddenly there sprung
,
    A confident report, that through the country rung
,
    That
Cam
her daintiest flood, long since entituled
Grant …
    Is sallying on for
Ouze,
determin’d by the way
    To entertain her friends the Muses with a lay
.
    Wherefore to show herself ere she to
Cambridge
came
,
    Most worthy of that town to which she gives the name
,
    Takes in her second head, from
Linton
coming in
,
    By
Shelford
having slid, which straightway she doth win;
    Than which a purer stream, a delicater brook
,
    Bright
Phœbus
in his course doth scarcely overlook
.
    Thus furnishing her banks, as sweetly, she doth glide
    Towards
Cambridge,
with rich meads laid forth on either side;
    And with the Muses oft did by the way converse …
    A wondrous learned flood
. …
    Possibly. But possibly also, by the mud of three centuries, a less pure stream, a less delicate brook now than then.
    Beneath a hanging may-tree, a thin cheeping comes; a brood of baby moor-chicks has hatched in the night, and now swims out to explore the green and gold world, four small black balls behind their mother, chirping their excitement to the morning.
    I splash up stream against the flowing weeds, scramble out and dry myself. The pure stream, the delicate brook, the learned flood, has a floor of soft mud, and is cold before the sun is high. I creep again into blankets, and would sleep the day in, but for the indefatigably cantiferous birds.

Bed
1.
Getting into it
    When I consider how, in a human creature’s normal life, each day, however long, however short, however weary, however merry, circumstanced by whatever disconcerting, extravagant, or revolting chances of destiny, ends in getting into bed—when I consider this, I wonder why each day is not a happy, hopeful, and triumphant march towards this delicious goal; why, when the sun downs and the evening hours run on, our hearts do not lighten and sing in the sure and certain hope of this recumbent bliss. If it were a bliss less recurrent, more rare and strange, its exquisite luxury would surely seem a conception for the immortal gods, beyond any man’s deserts. Even through the cold and sober definition given by the dictionary, comfort and anticipation warmly throb. “It consists for the most part of a sack or mattress of sufficient size, stuffed with something soft or springy, raised generally upon a ‘bed-stead’ or support, and covered with sheets, blankets, etc., for the purpose of warmth. The name is given both to the whole structure in its most elaborate form, and, as in ‘feather-bed,’ to the stuffed sack or mattress which constitutes its essentialpart. (A person is said to