C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Author Unknown
The Clowns Song
“H
Forth I tumble from out the slips;
“Here I am!”—and a hundred voices
Welcome me on with laughing lips.
The master, with easy pride,
Treads the sawdust down;
Or quickens the horse’s stride,
And calls for his jesting clown.
Here’s a lady that wants your place.”
I throw them a somerset, quick,
And grin in some beauty’s face.
I tumble and jump and chaff,
And fill them with wild delights;
Whatever my sorrow, I laugh
Through the summer and winter nights.
Do they strike, why I cringe and stoop;
And I ride like a bird in air,
And I jump through the blazing hoop.
Whatever they say or do,
I am ready with joke and gibe;
And whenever the jests are new,
I follow, like all my tribe.
Whatever the wise ones say;
For when I steal home to rest
(And I seek it at dawn of day),
If winter, there is no fire;
If summer, there is no air:
My welcome’s a hungry choir
Of children, and scanty fare.
As famine can make man’s wife;
We are both of us sour and old
With drinking the dregs of life.
Yet why do I sigh? I wonder,
Would the Pit or the Boxes sigh,
Should I wash off my paint, and, under,
Show how a fool must die?