Etching

Two and thirty is the ploughman.He's a man of gallant inches,And his hair is close and curly,And his beard;But his face is wan and sunken,And his eyes are large and brilliant,And his shoulder-blades are sharp,And his knees.

He is weak of,wits, religious,Full of sentiment and yearning,Gentle, faded—with a coughAnd a snore.When his wife (who was a widow,And is many years his elder)Fails to write, and that is always,He desponds.

Let his melancholy wander,And he'll tell you pretty storiesOf the women that have wooed himLong ago;Or he'll sing of bonnie lassesKeeping sheep among the heather,With a crackling, hackling clickIn his voice.