Explore "Advice to Lovers" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I knew an old man at a Fair
Who made it his twice-yearly task
To clamber on a cider cask / And cry to all the yokels there:
"Lovers to-day and for all time / Preserve the meaning of my rhyme: / Love is not kindly nor yet grim / But does to you as you to him.
"Whistle, and Love will come to you, / Hiss, and he fades without a word, / Do wrong, and he great wrong will do, / Speak, he retells what he has heard.
"Then all you lovers have good heed / Vex not young Love in word or deed: / Love never leaves an unpaid debt, / He will not pardon nor forget."
The old man's voice was sweet yet loud / And this shows what a man was he, / He'd scatter apples to the crowd / And give great draughts of cider, free.