Classic Poem

I met a poet
And I hated him.
He wore small whiskers like a Georgian buck,
A black sombrero for a hat.
He seemed to think that he was born elect,
That we should hang upon his golden words,
But I
Thought him a fool.

I'd rather talk with tinkers by the road,
Or crazy Jane who has fine things to say,
Or with the old man scraping at the mud.
Thank God, my life was thrown into the moil
Of honest, sweaty things that turn the world.
Big ploughmen who take pride in furrowed fields,
Miners who pick the coal in cramping dark —
These told me of the joy that follows work,
Muscles at ease, and food, and twilit roads,
Talk, arm-linked with a girl.
I loved the keen-eyed men with shapely hands
Skilled to control the working of machines.
The only poems that they knew were wheels
Which in their whirling makes a rhythmic song.
One in his eager youth had been at sea
And faced the blizzards of Cape Horn four times.
He looked with fearless eyes on lesser things.
I liked that man.
I've known old soldiers who could wile the time
With talk of India, Egypt, and the veldt.
And all their speech was savoured with the salt
Of seas and windy spaces and the sun;
Their stories wove for me a tapestry
Of troops and cavalry and baggage mules,
Of gilded temples, gleaming minarets,
Black fighting men and steely, subtle guns —
When shall this Ireland see their like again?
Those Dublins, Munsters, Connaughts and the rest.
I have a heart for jockeys!
In their eyes I've seen the racecourse
Curving to the straight;
The hurdles and the dyke, the crowded stand,
The cheating mob of gaitered, crafty men;
The kind-eyed horses slowly pacing round
The paddock, led by wizened, bow-legged boys.

Some men I knew drove trams, they cracked good jokes,
For traffic is a jolly pilgrimage
And some made boots,
And some kept shops.
I thought — " These men
Hold up the pillars of the world for us,
Or how could poets warm their chilly feet
And buy their velvet coats and feed themselves?
What if these only read the daily news
And smoke their pipes and love to play at " House",
Without these men the poets could not sing. "

I met a poet.
But in hating him
I may have been a fool.
Perhaps he was a man beneath that hat,
Like other men he might have rowed a boat
Or stoked a furnace if he had a chance.
He might, for all I know, have kept a shop
And sliced up bacon, witty at his work,
Or climbed a ladder, hod upon his back.
I may have under-rated him — God knows.