The Old Wife's Mood Poem by David Lewis Paget

'Don’t grumble and growl and roar at me
Old man, when your temper’s turning,
I’ve long since tired of your vain disputes
In the halls of your lordship’s learning,
You think, old man, you can tame me now
By beating your breakers shoreward,
I’ve never put up with your antics yet
When your spume is fuming forward.'

‘Don’t shriek at me, ’ said the old man sea
As she whipped at his crests in temper,
‘It’s always the way that your humour turns
Each bleak and harsh September;
Will ever you calm yourself, you witch
And settle my troubled rancour,
Or shriek and howl like a grey old owl
At my spindrift’s sullen anger? ’

‘Old, I was old when the world was young
In my hallowed depths and deeps,
What did I want with a wife like you
Whose temper never sleeps? ’
‘Don’t carp and cavil at me, ’ she shrilled
In the runnels at rocks uncovered,
‘I’d turn the tide in a backward slide
For the sake of a new-found lover.’

She turned to whip at the whining wires:
‘I’m leaving you and your brood, ’
The sea came grumbling round the Pier
‘It’s only the old wife’s mood.
She’s light and happy in other months,
In love that’s ever the way.’
The old wife crept from her hiding place
To join him, out in the bay.

15 March 1975