  Sweet pretty fledgelings, perched on the rail arow, Expectantly happy, where ye can watch below Your parents a-hunting i’ the meadow grasses All the gay morning to feed you with flies; Ye recall me a time sixty summers ago, When, a young chubby chap, I sat just so With others on a school-form rank’d in a row, Not less eager and hungry than you, I trow, With intelligences agape and eyes aglow, While an authoritative old wise-acre Stood over us and from a desk fed us with flies. Dead flies—such as litter the library south-window, That buzzed at the panes until they fell stiff-baked on the sill, Or are roll’d up asleep i’ the blinds at sunrise, Or wafer’d flat in a shrunken folio. A dry biped he was, nurtured likewise On skins and skeletons, stale from top to toe With all manner of rubbish and all manner of lies. |
|
