How oft on Sundays, when I'd time to tramp, <br />My rambles led me to a gipsy's camp, <br />Where the real effigy of midnight hags, <br />With tawny smoked flesh and tattered rags, <br />Uncouth-brimmed hat, and weather-beaten cloak, <br />Neath the wild shelter of a knotty oak, <br />Along the greensward uniformly pricks <br />Her pliant bending hazel's arching sticks: <br />While round-topt bush, or briar-entangled hedge, <br />Where flag-leaves spring beneath, or ramping sedge, <br />Keeps off the bothering bustle of the wind, <br />And give the best retreat she hopes to find. <br />How oft I've bent me oer her fire and smoke, <br />To hear her gibberish tale so quaintly spoke, <br />While the old Sybil forged her boding clack, <br />Twin imps the meanwhile bawling at her back; <br />Oft on my hand her magic coin's been struck, <br />And hoping chink, she talked of morts of luck: <br />And still, as boyish hopes did first agree, <br />Mingled with fears to drop the fortune's fee, <br />I never failed to gain the honours sought, <br />And Squire and Lord were purchased with a groat. <br />But as man's unbelieving taste came round, <br />She furious stampt her shoeless foot aground, <br />Wiped bye her soot-black hair with clenching fist, <br />While through her yellow teeth the spittle hist, <br />Swearing by all her lucky powers of fate, <br />Which like as footboys on her actions wait, <br />That fortune's scale should to my sorrow turn, <br />And I one day the rash neglect should mourn; <br />That good to bad should change, and I should be <br />Lost to this world and all eternity; <br />That poor as Job I should remain unblest:-- <br />(Alas, for fourpence how my die is cast!) <br />Of not a hoarded farthing be possesst, <br />And when all's done, be shoved to hell at last!<br /><br />John Clare<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-gipsy-s-camp/
