Muses, I dub myself, despite each rival claim, with haughty heraldry, King of Pissefontaine. -- Count if you choose, but king is not too much, I hold. -- With lance in rest I charge all the pretenders bold who hie them hither armed though but with stoups of ale, across the fields and vines my title to assail. Who more than I to sing this village would desire, lover of mornings clear, perched high above them all, where twenty lusty cocks, for lack of village spire, from the roofs, to the countryside the first good-morrow call? Who passes happy days in the free atmosphere to see it on its rock in equipoise appear, to count the houses fair that o'er the bushes spring like herds of little goats buoyantly gambolling? 'Tis I. Is it not I? -- more proofs? you're still in doubt? come, drink, and suffer me, drinking, to search them out -- who, then, descends superb in dawning's golden shrine, his graceful calf caressed by tendrils of the vine, his flowing cloak bedecked with drops of crystal dew, towards the castle of my choice, this jolly tavern blue, and, glass in hand, without, fearing no whit the prod of horns, to sleeping husbands doth sing this gay aubade (for a brief instant brushed by kisses circumspect since for eye alone the right of @3jambage@1 do I exact), then in a rocking-chair plunged like a goodly king -- this throne a Briton left to pay his reckoning -- with rapture o'er the square the slender limes doth view, quivering in the wind as they are wont to do, while in the hollow roads my subject marmots go far as Triel to roll the casks of @3picolo@1 -- letting my wits, still sharp, suit to the cadence gay of their stentorian tread the rhythm of my lay? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO RICHARD R. WRIGHT - INSTRUCTOR by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON BOTANICAL GARDENS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE BURIED LADY by PAUL VALERY THE SNOW-SHOWER by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYAM by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL UNCLE ANANIAS by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON MY SISTER'S SLEEP by DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI |