GREAT Snoring and Norwich
A dish of pease porridge!
The clock of Troy town
Strikes one o’clock; brown
Honey-bees in the clover
Are half-the-seas-over,
And Time is a-boring
From here to Great Snoring.
But Time, the grey mouse,
Can’t wake up the house,
For old King Priam
Is sleepy as I am!
III
FAT WILLIAM AND THE TRAINS
WHEN I should be at work, instead
I lie and kick for fun, in bed:
Down the narrow rails, hear trains
Go quick as other people’s brains—
Hump their backs and snore and growl,
Grumble, rumble, tumble, prowl—
Bearing people, pink as pigs,
Through water-clear fields dancing jigs.
Like a whale among my pillows
Dash I, splash I, sheets in billows
As the trains toss spangled seas,
Like bright flags on the tusks of these.
How I envy those at work
When I can lie in bed and shirk.
IV
A PENNY FARE TO BABYLON
“A PENNY fare to Babylon,
A penny for each thought!”
“Oh, ma’am, no, ma’am,
Can’t be bought!
The Sun gives pots of money,
The Moon, her bread and honey,
When humming like a clover-field
I go up to town.
Whitened by the Moon’s flour,
All the birds I own,
Lest they be baked into a pie,
Are flown, dear, flown.
Though you whistle in the corridors
That dance into my brain—
Oh, ma’am, no, ma’am,
They will not come again.”
V
THE BUTCHER’S SHOP
PANTALOON jumps in his bright
Butcher’s shop, where red and white
Meat hangs up like clown’s attire—
Laughs as shrill as grass or fire.
In his house sits Il Dottore,
In the rickety top story
Plays a mandoline to please
Coral bells on cherry trees....
But the bees have left his bonnet
For the meat; they buzz upon it—
Goldy summer lights—they hover
Like the bees upon red clover,
Flying straight into the shop,
Full of facts, where theories stop.
VI
THE KING OF CHINA’S DAUGHTER
THE King of China’s daughter,
She never would love me
Though I hung my cap and bells upon
Her nutmeg tree.
For oranges and lemons,
The stars in bright blue air,
(I stole them long ago, my dear)
Were dangling there.
The Moon did give me silver pence,
The Sun did give me gold,
And both together softly blew
And made my porridge cold;
But the King of China’s daughter
Pretended not to see
When I hung my cap and bells upon
Her nutmeg tree.