The Modern PoetFor your words and others.
Release 15
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This round: quieter reading, book-style chapters, and one HH throughout.

THE MODERN POET

The New Year

By Edward Thomas

HE was the one man I met up in the woods That stormy New Year's morning; and at first sight, Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much Of the strange tripod was a man. His body, Bowed horizontal, was supported equally By legs at one end, by a rake at the other: Thus he rested, far less like a man than His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig. But when I saw it was an old man bent, At the same moment came into my mind The games at which boys bend thus, _High- Cockalorum_, Or _Fly-the-garter_, and _Leap-frog_. At the sound Of footsteps he began to straighten himself; His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise's; He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth Politely ere I wished him "A Happy New Year," And with his head cast upward sideways Muttered-- So far as I could hear through the trees' roar-- "Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too," While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.

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Poetry data from PoetryDB, curated by The Combed Thunderclap · metadata CC BY 4.0 · Public-domain poem text (USA)

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