1905 · CLOSE READING
Oracles
Oracles (1905), PDF p. 7
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THE BALLOON
Written (at the age of fifteen, and still unsurpassed) in bed with
measles at Tonbridge in Kent.
FLOATING in the summer air,
What is that for men to see ?
Anywhere and everywhere,
Now a bullet, now a tree—
Till we all begin to swear :
What the devil can it be ?
See its disproportioned head,
Tiny trunk and limbs lopped bare,
Hydrocephalus the dread
With a surgeon chopping there ;
Chopping legs and arms all red
With the sticky lumps of hair.
Like a man in this complaint
Floats this creature in the sky,
Till the gaping rustics faint
And the smirking milkmaids cry,
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