Short Poems

There was an Old Man of the Isles,
Whose face was pervaded with smiles:
He sung high dum diddle, and played on the fiddle,
That amiable man of the Isles.

Old Age in his ailing
At youth will be railing
It scorns youth's regaling
Pooh-pooh it does, silly dream;
But me, the fool, save
From waxing so grave
As, reduced to skimmed milk, to slander the cream.

The old saltman, hair turned white,
in his hovel of thatch:
the sixth month come, he boils down the salt
beside the blistering fire.
He steps outside and stands a while
in the raging sun:
for him, this moment out of doors
counts as cooling off.

The old boy's seventy-three this year,
and keeps on dreaming of returning to the south!
If the Emperor would let me take off my official cap
I'd get myself a fishing pole and fish at Stone Pond!

Older and younger brother meet —
both with white eyebrows drooping down.
And what delight in this time of peace,
day after day getting drunk as fools!

Old man pushing seventy,
in truth he acts like a little boy,
whooping with delight when he spies some mountain fruits,
laughing with joy, tagging after village mummers;
with the others having fun stacking tiles to make a pagoda,
standing alone staring at his image in the jardiniere pool.
Tucked under his arm, a battered book to read,
just like the time he first set off for school.

On the grassy banks
Lambkins at their pranks;
Woolly sisters, woolly brothers,
Jumping off their feet
While their woolly mothers
Watch by them and bleat.

Once I learnt in wilful hour
How to vex him; still I keep,
Now unwilfully, my power:
Every day he comes to weep.

On yonder hill there is a red deer,
The more you shoot it, the more you may,
You cannot drive that deer away.
The rising sun

Englished.

On the Sicilian strand a Hare well wrought
Before the Hounds was by a Dog-fish caught;
Quoth she; all rape of Sea and Earth's on me,
Perhaps of Heav'n, if there a Dog-star be.