Classic Poem

As she sits at her stall in the Martinmas Fair,
With a patched blue umbrella slung over her chair,
Old Betty Riddle sells
Greenjacks and jargonels,
Fixing some ghost of old days with her stare.

A ha'p'orth of greenjacks! each little boy cries,
Devouring six-penn'orth at least with his eyes:
Into his grubby hands
Pears drop as still he stands;
But she gives him no glance as he munches his prize.

While mumbling and mowing she sits all the day,
And her mellow green pyramids dwindle away,
Folk in the roundabout
Racket and skirl and shout;
Yet never a word to it all does she say.

And even if, when her whole stock-in-trade's bought,
Some laughing lad's eye by that cold stare is caught,
Glumly away he'll slink,
Too dull of wit to think
Of offering a penny to her for her thought.

And soon they forget her, the lads without sense;
Yet the thought that is burning that blue and intense
Past-piercing steely eye,
Blind to the passer-by,
Must be worth a deal more than the pears and the pence.

Still staring she sits as the slow hours chime
Till the raw fog has covered her bare boards with rime —
Crazy old wife who sells
Greenjacks and jargonels —
Having buried three husbands in all in her time.