AN INSIGHTFUL POET

Shakespeare's comedy “As You Like It”, about love and folly in the Forest of Arden…

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and entrances

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

At first the infant, muling and  puking in the nurses arms..

Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face.

Creeping like a snail

Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,

Sighing like a furnace, with woeful ballard

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.

 Then a soldier

Full of strange oaths and bearded like a bard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the canon’s mouth.

And then the justice.

In fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instance;

And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turn again towards childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

In second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans

Everything.