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The Poet Who Sleeps

By Walter Savage Landor

Topics: classic

One day, when I was young, I read     About a poet, long since dead,     Who fell asleep, as poets do     In writing--and make others too.     But herein lies the story's gist,     How a gay queen came up and kist     The sleeper.     'Capital!' thought I.     'A like good fortune let me try.'     Many the things we poets feign.     I feign'd to sleep, but tried in vain.     I tost and turn'd from side to side,     With open mouth and nostrils wide.     At last there came a pretty maid,     And gazed; then to myself I said,     'Now for it!' She, instead of kiss,     Cried, 'What a lazy lout is this!'

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"One day, when I was young, I read..."

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"One day, when I was young, I read..." by Walter Savage Landor

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"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Walter Savage Landor

About Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) was an English poet and prose writer whose "Imaginary Conversations" and lyric poems are marked by classical restraint and epigrammatic wit. His poem "Rose Aylmer" is one of the most admired short poems in English.

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"Now thou art gone, tho' not gone far,     It seems..."

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