The Peddler (Male)
The Peddler (Male)
Original Text
Seranus, Penelope and Other Poems: A New Book of Verse
(Toronto: the author, 1934): 13.
1Scissors and needles and pins--pins and needles and tape!
3What's wrong with his mouth? You would say it's full of his needles and pins,
4It's all on one side with a kink, a kind of a twisted gape.
5"Shell-shocked, lady, that's all. I was knocked pretty well out of shape;
6One ear's tore off, if you notice, for in one of them foreign inns
7A shell burst near to my shoulder; it carried off Sergeant Minns,
8And left me a sight for a circus, with a mug like a drunken ape.
9I'd do something else if I could for I frighten the children at times,
10Or else they run after me jeering and calling me nasty names,
11And their mothers don't like me disturbing their marbles and such-like games.
12And what do I get for it? Dollars? Not much, just nickles and dimes,
13Just sneering and knocking and mocking all day and from night to morn."
14Autolycus sighs at life and wishes he'd never been born.
Notes
2] Autolycus: peddler in Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale. Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011
Rhyme
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