Poems (Henley)/Etching

by William Ernest Henley

XII ETCHING

Two and thirty is the ploughman.He's a man of gallant inches,And his hair is close and curly,    And his beard;But his face is wan and sunken,And his eyes are large and brilliant,And his shoulder-blades are sharp,    And his knees.

He is weak of,wits, religious,Full of sentiment and yearning,Gentle, faded—with a cough    And a snore.When his wife (who was a widow,And is many years his elder)Fails to write, and that is always,    He desponds.

Let his melancholy wander,And he'll tell you pretty storiesOf the women that have wooed him   Long ago;Or he'll sing of bonnie lassesKeeping sheep among the heather,With a crackling, hackling click   In his voice.