I saw old Idleness, fat, with great cheeks Puffed to the huge circumference of a sigh, But past all tinge of apples long ago. His boyish fingers twiddled up and down The filthy remnant of a cup of physic That thicked in odour all the while he stayed. His eyes were sad as fishes that swim up And stare upon an element not theirs Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down, Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream. His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it; And never were such meagre puppets made The slaves of such a tyrant, as his thoughts Of that obese epitome of ills. Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself; And when upon the wan green of his eye I marked the gathering lustre of a tear, Thought I myself must weep, until I caught A grey, smug smile of satisfaction smirch His pallid features at his misery. And laugh did I, to see the little snares He had set for pests to vex him: his great feet Prisoned in greater boots; so narrow a stool To seat such elephantine parts as his; Ay, and the book he read, a Hebrew Bible; And, to incite a gross and backward wit, An old, crabbed, wormed, Greek dictionary; and A foxy Ovid bound in dappled calf. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HEART'S-EASE by WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR LONE DOG by IRENE RUTHERFORD MCLEOD HIC JACET by LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON THE SLEEPER by EDGAR ALLAN POE THE RAZOR-SELLER by JOHN WOLCOTT HON. MR. SUCKLETHUMBKIN'S STORY: THE EXECUTION; A SPORTING ANECDOTE by RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM THE SHEPHERD'S CONTENT by RICHARD BARNFIELD |