Poems

Excerpt from Poems
Characters from Shakespeare
Falstaff
'Twas in a tavern that with old age stooped
And leaned rheumatic rafters o'er his head, -
A blowzed, prodigious man which talked, and stared,
And rolled, as if with purpose, a small eye
Like a sweet Cupid in a cask of wine.
I could not view his fatness for his soul,
Which peeped like harmless lightnings and was gone;
As haps to voyagers of the summer air.
And when he laughed, Time trickled 'neath those beams,
As in a glass; and when in self-defence
He puffed that paunch, and wagged that huge, Greek head,
Nosed like a Punchinello, then it seemed
An hundred widows wept in his small voice,
Now tenor, and now bass of drum my war.
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