The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling | |
In a dim library, just behind the chair | |
From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling | |
A song about some Lovers at a Fair, | |
Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling | |
That rhymes were beastly things and never there. | |
|
And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking | |
About the tragic poem I’d been writing,… | |
An old man’s life of beer and whisky drinking, | |
His years of kidnapping and wicked fighting; | |
And how at last, into a fever sinking, | |
Remorsefully he died, his bedclothes biting. | |
|
But suddenly I saw the bright green cover | |
Of a thin pretty book right down below; | |
I snatched it up and turned the pages over, | |
To find it full of poetry, and so | |
Put it down my neck with quick hands like a lover, | |
And turned to watch if the old man saw it go. | |
|
The book was full of funny muddling mazes, | |
Each rounded off into a lovely song, | |
And most extraordinary and monstrous phrases | |
Knotted with rhymes like a slave-driver’s thong. | |
And metre twisting like a chain of daisies | |
With great big splendid words a sentence long. | |
|
I took the book to bed with me and gloated, | |
Learning the lines that seemed to sound most grand; | |
So soon the pretty emerald green was coated | |
With jam and greasy marks from my hot hand, | |
While round the nursery for long months there floated | |
Wonderful words no one could understand. | |