Samuel Johnson

Large unpredictable hands zoom in, assail him,

Freakish through his eyes’ semi-darkness,

Whudding round his head’s cracked bell,

Violating with a will to correct.

Little Samuel sits in scrofulous stupor,

Defiantly gulping down the painful world,

Wills himself independent, responsible,

Not to blame the world for anything,

But cure himself with unceasing ambition.

What if disease should unman him,

Make him crave self-pity, and forfeit

The hopeful energy to strive and fight?

The inner man is madness, treachery, fear...

He gropes at the solid world for support,

To sober his erratic mind with fact.


The young man stares up at the town clock,

Too stunned by lassitude even to recognise

The hour. Suicide or lunacy? Reason has

No jurisdiction here. Every resolution

Disillusions itself, stranded in self-loathing.

Mile after mile, the cumbersome idiot

Tramps the roads, trying to forget himself,

To outpace the demons of sloth.

Self-persecuting his soul with scruples,

He teeters, besieged, in self-revenge,

Bedevilled by angry tics and compulsions.

Imagine, imagine, imagine!-Attack the void

With ferocious invention, toil, travail

To outmanoeuvre despair...or die...


On a Lincolnshire hill, with friends,

Johnson surveys the steep slope, mischievously

Grinning: “Why, I haven’t had a proper roll

In ages!”In a moment, he empties his pockets

And lies on the edge, then launches himself,

Turning over and over, bouncing down

To the bottom, then clambers to his feet,

Huffing and laughing, big face flushed

With childish triumph.


Sleepless, the sage paces up and down his rooms,

Measuring out the floor with heavy tread,

-Will it bear his weight, his confusion and grief?-

Contriving ritual patterns with heels and toe,

Soothing himself with arithmetical exercises.

In the neighbouring room sleeps a sick young

Prostitute, a hollow-cheeked wretch he had lifted

Out of the utter the night beforehand carried

Safely home on his broad back. The destitute

Would always find succour under his roof,

Where he returned, always, with pockets empty,

All the coins given in alms to street-beggars.

Hunched at table, through the night, he hews

Out solemn stately periods, solid bridges

To hold him to the earth and carry him over.