Bub in a Tub

    Smug in his lodging is little Diogenes;
Up to his chin in a tub the young Trajan is,
Hopping & slopping about, like the progonies
    Thirsty Latona sent croaking & hopping
And sopping, for stopping her draught in the puddle so;
Dashing & splashing, there’s nearly no dodging his
    Shots when he kicks as the frogs in the mud’ll do.

Over his mother & sissie & brother
    He rains like a Triton, a merry & bright one,
A shower from his heels from his fingers another;
Determined to damp us, he blows like a grampus,
And tosses his corpus about as a porpoise
Will leap in the sea, & threatens to swamp us;
    Cantering off on the tip of each claw, puss
Sends from the shower, looking back as she scampers.

The chubby fat bubby who sits on the fountain
In tinted Carrasa hewn out of the mountain,
And blows from a shell that is cursed like a pillow

A jet that returns in a true weeping willow,
Is likest my plashes, my brave water-dashes,
Yet with nothing so rare as his hair & his flesh are,
That twining & early, this ruddy & pearly
With a light such as flows through a pure blush rose,
All down from his cheeks to the tip of his toes;
For, now like the poppies, not porpoise, he blows,
As, blithest of misses, Hygeia with her kisses
Has started his blood all a-tingle with blisses.
He’s fairer, & rarer, than cherubs of air are,
And shines through the plush of his shower like the heaven
Of Jupiter’s billet-doux, greetings & still adieus,
(Mercury often was chosen to fill her shoes,)
Iris the beautiful, Iris the wonderful,
Treading on vapors with lightning & thunder fall.

Tie on the silly bub dares not to fill a tub,
Splashing in waters so cold it might kill a cub
Tough as a heaven and handsome as Hebe, 
And gay as a phebe, will he be, as she be,
Who takes what the water gives; long may it free he!
Ancient Diogenes, talking hodge podge in his
Tub, from an inner cult, might become cynical,

So may Renown on the top of her pinnacle;
Never, however, this sprite of the river,
Enthroned in his tub, who, if once he may shiver
But makes the young Cupid complete with his quiver!