Herding his cattle on the dusty flat,

A cowboy whose guitar had lost its tone,

With the grey moonlight leaking through his hat,

Thus, on his ancient gelding as he sat,

From hungry guts ventriloquized alone—

“At Oxford if I hadn’t proved a fool

(What tragedies my happy fate forbids!)

I’d be a Charlie sitting on a stool

And teaching mathematics to the kids.

My old professor in a thousand shifts,

My early friend, perhaps the last I’ll know,

I thank my Poverty for all my gifts

Who shares with me his coat of wind and snow.

All else I can bequeath to who requires—

To those who lack the true poetic fires

I leave the fine nystagmus of my eye

To lead them round the world in frantic gyres,

And land them in a garret or a sty;

That he for whom the fatted calf was fed,

So late returning homeward for the spree,

Shall find a full-grown toro in his stead

And thank his fortune for the nearest tree.

But I will hoard away my lack of gear—

The world my sun-baked spud, my stove the day!

And if at times its rind be charred and tough

Keen hunger is the knife that cuts the way—

There’s death in surfeit, dullness in ‘Enough.’

To the anatomists—my twisted spine—

Diploma of equestrian despite;

But to their patients half my Crusoe sleight

Of fishing out the cargo from the wreck;

And this light heart—to raft them to the calm

Green island with its periscope of palm,

And my Good Luck to Admiral the deck!

To those who dream of roses and of lilies—

(Earnest of faith) these breeches I got rent

When breaking in the pride of English fillies

(My warhorse still) and punching cows in Kent.

And to my children, all that I would save,

When empires crash and red battalions form,

The Celtic blood so buoyant to the storm,

That gay joy-riding foam of every wave!”