Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ISAAC BALL, by RICHARD HUGHES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ISAAC BALL, by                 Poet Analysis    
First Line: Painting pictures / worth nothing at all
Last Line: Than any man alive.
Subject(s): Paintings & Painters


PAINTING pictures
Worth nothing at all
In a dark cellar
Sits Isaac Ball.

Cobwebs on his butter,
Herrings in bed;
Stout matted in the hair
Of his poor cracked head.

There he paints Men's Thoughts
-- Or so says he:
For in that cellar
It's too dark to see.

Isaac knew great men,
Poets and peers:
Treated crown-princes
To stouts and beers.

Some still visit him;
Pretend to buy
His unpainted pictures --
The Lord knows why.

His grey beard is woolly,
Eyes brown and wild:
Sticky things in his pocket
For anybody's child.

Some day he'll win fame,
-- So Isaac boasts,
Lecturing half the night
To long-legged ghosts.

Isaac was young once:
At sixty-five
Still seduces more girls
Than any man alive.





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