Here's where the lads of the village cricket:
I was a lad not wide from here:
Couldn't I whip off the bale from the wicket?
Like an old world those days appear!
Donkey, sheep, geese and thatched ale-house
I know them!

They are old friends of my halts, and scem, Somehow, as if kind thanks I owe them:

Juggling don't hinder the heart's esteem.

Juggling's no sin, for we must have victual: Nature allows us to bait for the fool. Holding one's own makes us juggle no little; But, to increase it, hard juggling's the rule. You that are sneering at my profession, Haven't you juggled a vast amount? There's the Prime Minister, in one Session, Juggles more games than my sins'll count.

I've murdered insects with mock thunder:
Conscience, for that, in men don't quail.
I've made bread from the bump of wonder:
That's my business, and there's my tale.
Fashion and rank all praised the professor:
Ay! and I've had my smile from the Queen:
Bravo, Jerry! she meant: God bless her!
Ain't this a sermon on that scene?

I've studied men from my topsy-turvy
Close, and, I reckon, rather true.
Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy:
Most, a dash between the two.
But it's a woman, old girl, that makes me
Think more kindly of the race:

And it's a woman, old girl, that shakes me
When the Great Juggler I must face.

We two were married, due and legal: Honest we've lived since we've been one. Lord! I could then jump like an eagle:

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Hand up the chirper! ripe ale winks in it;
Let's have comfort and be at peace.
Once a stout draught made me light as a linnet.
Cheer up! the Lord must have his lease.
May be for none see in that black hollow

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BELLEROPHON

Maimed, beggared, grey; seeking an alms; with nod

Of palsy doing task of thanks for bread;

Upon the stature of a god,

He whom the Gods have struck bends low his

head.

Weak words he has, that slip the nerveless tongue
Deformed, like his great frame: a broken arc:
Once radiant as the javelin flung
Right at the centre breastplate of his mark

Oft pausing on his white-eyed inward look,
Some undermountain narrative he tells,

As gapped by Lykian heat the brook
Cut from the source that in the upland swells.

The cottagers who dole him fruit and crust, With patient inattention hear him prate:

And comes the snow, and comes the dust, Comes the old wanderer, more bent of late.

A crazy beggar grateful for a meal
Has ever of himself a world to say.

For them he is an ancient wheel
Spinning a knotted thread the livelong day.

He cannot, nor do they, the tale connect; For never singer in the land has been

ΙΟ

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Who him for theme did not reject:
Spurned of the hoof that sprang the Hippocrene.

Albeit a theme of flame to bring them straight
The snorting white-winged brother of the wave,
They hear him as a thing by fate
Cursed in unholy babble to his grave.

As men that spied the wings, that heard the snort,
Their sires have told; and of a martial prince
Bestriding him; and old report
Speaks of a monster slain by one long since.

There is that story of the golden bit
By Goddess given to tame the lightning steed:
A mortal who could mount, and sit
Flying, and up Olympus midway speed.

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