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| 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 | 5 |
| That rhymes were beastly things and never there. | |
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| 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; | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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. | |
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| The book was full of funny muddling mazes, | |
| Each rounded off into a lovely song, | 20 |
| 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. | |
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| I took the book to bed with me and gloated, | 25 |
| 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. | 30 |
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