| ‘THOUGH to my feathers in the wet, | |
| I have stood here from break of day, | |
| I have not found a thing to eat | |
| For only rubbish comes my way. | |
| Am I to live on lebeen-lone?’ | 5 |
| Muttered the old crane of Gort. | |
| ‘For all my pains on lebeen-lone.’ | |
| |
| King Guari walked amid his court | |
| The palace-yard and river-side | |
| And there to three old beggars said: | 10 |
| ‘You that have wandered far and wide | |
| Can ravel out what’s in my head. | |
| Do men who least desire get most, | |
| Or get the most who most desire?’ | |
| A beggar said: ‘They get the most | 15 |
| Whom man or devil cannot tire, | |
| And what could make their muscles taut | |
| Unless desire had made them so.’ | |
| But Guari laughed with secret thought, | |
| ‘If that be true as it seems true, | 20 |
| One of you three is a rich man, | |
| For he shall have a thousand pounds | |
| Who is first asleep, if but he can | |
| Sleep before the third noon sounds.’ | |
| And thereon merry as a bird, | 25 |
| With his old thoughts King Guari went | |
| From river-side and palace-yard | |
| And left them to their argument. | |
| ‘And if I win,’ one beggar said, | |
| ‘Though I am old I shall persuade | 30 |
| A pretty girl to share my bed’; | |
| The second: ‘I shall learn a trade’; | |
| The third: ‘I’ll hurry to the course | |
| Among the other gentlemen, | |
| And lay it all upon a horse’; | 35 |
| The second: ‘I have thought again: | |
| A farmer has more dignity.’ | |
| One to another sighed and cried: | |
| The exorbitant dreams of beggary, | |
| That idleness had borne to pride, | 40 |
| Sang through their teeth from noon to noon; | |
| And when the second twilight brought | |
| The frenzy of the beggars’ moon | |
| They closed their blood-shot eyes for naught. | |
| One beggar cried: ‘You’re shamming sleep.’ | 45 |
| And thereupon their anger grew | |
| Till they were whirling in a heap. | |
| |
| They’d mauled and bitten the night through | |
| Or sat upon their heels to rail, | |
| And when old Guari came and stood | 50 |
| Before the three to end this tale, | |
| They were commingling lice and blood. | |
| ‘Time’s up,’ he cried, and all the three | |
| With blood-shot eyes upon him stared. | |
| ‘Time’s up,’ he cried, and all the three | 55 |
| Fell down upon the dust and snored. | |
| |
| ‘Maybe I shall be lucky yet, | |
| Now they are silent,’ said the crane. | |
| ‘Though to my feathers in the wet | |
| I’ve stood as I were made of stone | 60 |
| And seen the rubbish run about, | |
| It’s certain there are trout somewhere | |
| And maybe I shall take a trout | |
| If but I do not seem to care.’ | |
