Ready and alert, jovial, simple and clean.
This is how they again present themselves,
tucked away deep inside uncapital’d england –
the imagination’s permanent otherworld.
They and what they make are one and the same:
age-old but newly-coined, immaculately phrased
observations concerning gluttony and greed,
riches of the cupboard and the table,
recorded in stanzas, scenes, movements, acts, chapters,
unnumbered measures set down in a blanker verse,
envisioned by, for, and of the people.
Wherever you turn there is a player to be fed,
happy to be received with open arms and alms,
exchanging verses and tunes to be hummed:
a lusty Schubertiad of the demotic.
[Previous: Our Greatest Boons]
[Next: To Be Taken Up Again]