Well Said, Davy

He went to the city and goosed all the girls

With a stall on his finger for whittling the wills

To a clause in his favour and Come to me Sally,

One head in my chambers and one up your alley

And I am as old as my master.

I followed him further and lost all my friends,

The grease still thick on his fistful of pens.

I laced up his mutton and paddled his lake

In the game of Get-off-me and Just-for-my-sake

And I am as old as my master.

I sang in his service a farewell to sorrow

With rolled black stockings, the bone and the marrow.

The Law was a devil to cheat as you pleased

As we knelt on the backs of the city girls’ knees

And I am as old as my master.

So back to the country where birds are squawking,

With possets for pensions and witless talking

Of walloped starvelings and soldiers’ fortunes

From his nodding bench in the smothered orchards

And I am as old as my master.

Age turns the cheek of a buried scandal

In a nightmare of cheese and a quarter of candle.

When the servant is privy he’s good as a guest,

The first to be carved to and last to be pressed

And I am as old as my master.

Country or city, no pleasure can last:

It’s farewell to the future and beckon the past.

Though he that we drink with is sometimes a fool,

A single grey tooth may furnish a smile

And I am as old as my master.

Copyright Credit: John Fuller, “Well Said, Davy” from Collected Poems, published by Chatto & Windus. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited,
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk.

Source: Collected Poems (1996)