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The Fool

Topics: classic

Here is a tale for children and their grannies:     There was a fool, a man who'd had his chances     But missed them, somehow; lost them, just for fancies,     Tag-ends of things with which he'd crammed crannies     Of his cracked head, as panes are crammed with paper:     Fragments of song and bits of worthless writing,     Which he was never weary of reciting,     Fluttered his mind as night a windy taper.     A witless fool! who lived in some fair Venice     Of his own building where he dreamed of Beauty:     Who swore each weed a flower the sorry pauper!     This would not do. Men said he was a menace     To all mankind; and, as it was their duty,     Clapped him in prison where he died as proper.

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"Here is a tale for children and their grannies:..."

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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"

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"I saw the daughters of the ocean dance     With wi..."

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