Page:Collected poems vol 1 de la mare.djvu/63

 WAS in a tavern that with old age stooped And leaned rheumatic rafters o'er his head — A blowzed, prodigious man, which talked, and stared, And rolled, as if with purpose, a small eye Like a sweet Cupid in a cask of wine. I could not view his fatness for his soul. Which peeped like harmless lightnings and was gone; As haps to voyagers of the summer air. And when he laughed, Time trickled down those beams, As in a glass; and when in self-defence He puffed that paunch, and wagged that huge, Greek head, Nosed like a Punchinello, then it seemed An hundred widows swept in his small voice, Now tenor, and now bass of drummy war. He smiled, compact of loam, this orchard man; Mused like a midnight, webbed with moonbeam snares Of flitting Love; woke — and a King he stood, Whom all the world hath in sheer jest refused For helpless laughter's sake. And then, forfend! Bacchus and Jove reared vast Olympus there;