Читать книгу A Parody Anthology - Wells Carolyn - Страница 5

HE is to weet a melancholy carle:

Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair,

As hath the seeded thistle, when a parle

It holds with Zephyr, ere it sendeth fair

Its light balloons into the summer air;

Thereto his beard had not begun to bloom.

No brush had touched his cheek, or razor sheer;

No care had touched his cheek with mortal doom,

But new he was and bright, as scarf from Persian loom.

Ne carèd he for wine, or half and half;

Ne carèd he for fish, or flesh, or fowl;

And sauces held he worthless as the chaff;

He 'sdeigned the swine-head at the wassail-bowl:

Ne with lewd ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl;

Ne with sly lemans in the scorner's chair;

But after water-brooks this pilgrim's soul

Panted and all his food was woodland air;

Though he would oft-times feast on gilliflowers rare

The slang of cities in no wise he knew,

Tipping the wink to him was heathen Greek;

He sipped no “olden Tom," or “ruin blue,"

Or Nantz, or cherry-brandy, drunk full meek

By many a damsel brave and rouge of cheek;

Nor did he know each aged watchman's beat,

Nor in obscurèd purlieus would he seek

For curlèd Jewesses, with ankles neat,

Who, as they walk abroad, make tinkling with their feet.