Isaac Ball
Painting pictures
Worth nothing at all
In a dark cellar
Sits Isaac Ball.
Cobwebs on his butter,
Herrings in bed:
Stout matted in the hair
Of his poor cracked head.
There he paints Men’s Thoughts
—Or so says he:
For in that cellar
It’s too dark to see.
Isaac knew great men,
Poets and peers:
Treated crown-princes
To stouts and beers;
Some still visit him;
Pretend to buy
His unpainted pictures—
The Lord knows why.
His grey beard is woolly,
Eyes brown and wild:
Sticky things in his pocket
For anybody’s child.
Someday he’ll win fame,
—So Isaac boasts,
Lecturing half the night
To long-legged ghosts.
Isaac was young once:
At sixty-five
Still seduces more girls
Than any man alive.