Classic Poem

Painting pictures
Worth nothing at all
In a dark cellar
Sits Isaac Ball.

Cobwebs on his butter,
Herrings in bed:
Stout matted in the hair
Of his poor cracked head

There he paints Men's Thoughts
— Or so says he:
For in that cellar
It's too dark to see.

Isaac knew great men,
Poets and peers:
Treated crown-princes
To stouts and beers;

Some still visit him;
Pretend to buy
His unpainted pictures —
The Lord knows why.

His grey beard is woolly,
Eyes brown and wild:
Sticky things, in his pocket,
For anybody's child.

Someday he'll win fame,
— So Isaac boasts,
Lecturing half the night
To long-legged ghosts.

Isaac was young once:
At sixty-five
Still seduces more girls
Than any man alive.