IDLENESS

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.