Classic Poem

Babes, when I too was young and always right
And tangled in that not unrighteous fight
Beneath the Wooden Flag, the Painted Sign,
We poured our blood—or anyhow our wine—
For feast of all our fathers, and liberties;
Not having Charity before my eyes
I cursed a Grocer . . . saying that he, by fault,
Put sand in sugar and no salt in salt,
Trapped men with stinking fish that leapt from tins;
And rising to the toppling top of sins
Discouraged Pubs and spoilt the English Inns.
The Heavens, I learn as still I linger and live,
Punish more generously than men forgive,
No grinning Grocer slew me with a sweet
I writhed across no tins of poisoned meat;
Only . . . where far in the warm western shires
Steep stooping woods are dipped in sunset fires
The children told me that, aloof, alone,
Dwelt the Good Grocer whom I had not known.

Ah not forgotten, the children that I knew,
Not if they died—not even if they grew—
How their locks flamed and limbs like arrows sped
And faces shone with the wild news they said,
The Fairy Grocer—his were magic sales
His books might have been filled with fairy tales
He might have tipped sardines back in the sea
Given all his goods away with a pound of tea;
Sanding no sugar, on the other hand,
Have spread his sugar o'er the shores for sand:
And there took hands—and handfuls in their hands
And mouthfuls in their mouths; stuffed more and more
Till they had made erosion of the shore,
Bit bays and inlets out of all the coast
Like giant bites out of titanic toast.

To you, dear children of old days I send
This apologia to your early friend,
You know, though I said salt was dust in mirth,
Our dust can still be salt, and salt of the earth;
A Wizard is an easier thing to be
Than being a Good Grocer, as is he.