Well, another poem from that time, and you
see, these are poems looking before and after,
to quote somebody else.
And this poem is full of allusions to somebody else,
and this somebody else is Browning.
And to give you a poem that I hope you will already know,
but to remind you of a wonderful poem
that, with luck, you knew as a child.
But if not, it's never too late.
It's Browning's, "Pied Piper of Hamelin."
But I will tell you the story.
The story is a great story.
But that's one of the pipers in this poem.
The title of the poem is "The Piper."
There's also the phrase about paying the piper, you know?
Look it up in the dictionary.
It tells you something important.
"It is 20 words, it is--" yeah, very-- there you go.
"The Piper."
"It is 20 years since I first looked
for words for me now, whose wisdom or something
would stay me.
I chose to trouble myself about the onset of this.
It was remote.
It was grievous.
It is true, I was still a child.
I was older then and I hope ever to be again,
that summer sweating in the attic in the foreign country,
high above the Piper.
But hearing him once and never moving from my book,
and the narrow house full of pregnant women,
floor above floor, waiting in that city,
where the sun was the one bell.
It has taken me till now to be able to say even this.
It has taken me this long to know what I cannot say,
where it begins, like the names of the hungry.
Beginning, I am here.
Please be ready to teach me.
I am almost ready to learn."