Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PAUPER, by WALT MASON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PAUPER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The sad and seedy pauper has no one for a
Last Line: The kettle boil; for visions all are bootless which are not backed by toil.
Subject(s): Begging & Beggars; Homeless; Idleness; Poverty; Laziness; Sloth; Indolence


THE sad and seedy pauper has no one for a friend; his life has been improper,
and now it nears the end. Some cold and frosty morning will see him borne away,

another awful warning, to sleep till Judgment Day. And once he was as gilded as

any blithesome swain, and palaces he builded among the hills of Spain. He had
his golden vision, when he was young, like you; the future was elysian, in his
ecstatic view. When they have laid the pauper behind the old gray kirk, they'll

say, "He came a cropper, because he wouldn't work. Fair visions he was viewing,

of fortune and renown, but when it came to doing, he wouldn't buckle down. He
took it out in dreaming of wealth in vast amounts, while t'other lads were
scheming to swell their bank accounts. And so we plant his system behind this
old stone barn, and not a soul has missed him, and no one cares a darn." Oh,
golden youth, get busy, while you possess the years, and labor till you're
dizzy, like grandad's brindled steers. Yield not to visions fruitless, but make

the kettle boil; for visions all are bootless which are not backed by toil.





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