Last night I rode with Touchstone on a bus <br />From Ludgate Hill to World's End. It was he! <br />Despite the broadcloth and the bowler hat, <br />I knew him, Touchstone, the wild flower of folly, <br />The whetstone of his age, the scourge of kings, <br />The madcap morning star of elfin-land, <br />Who used to wrap his legs around his neck <br />For warmth on winter nights. He had slipped back, <br />To see what men were doing in a world <br />That should be wiser. He had watched a play, <br />Read several books, heard men discourse of art <br />And life; and he sat bubbling like a spring <br />In Arden. Never did blackbird, drenched with may, <br />Chuckle as Touchstone chuckled on that ride. <br />_Lord, what a world! Lord, what a mad, mad world!_ <br />Then, to the jolt and jingle of the engine, <br />He burst into this bunch of madcap rhymes:--<br /><br />Alfred Noyes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/touchstone-on-a-bus/
