I starved there.  God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,
Refuse and rubbish.  One fine frosty day,
My stomach being empty as your hat,
The wind doubled me up and down I went. 
Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,
(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)
And so along the wall, over the bridge, 90
By the straight cut to the convent.  Six words there,
While I stood munching my first bread that month: 
“So, boy, you’re minded,” quoth the good fat father
Wiping his own mouth, ’t was refection-time—­
“To quit this very miserable world? 
Will you renounce” . . . “the mouthful of bread?” thought I;
By no means!  Brief, they made a monk of me;
1 did renounce the world, its pride and greed,
Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,
Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici 100
Have given their hearts to—­all at eight years old. 
Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,
’T was not for nothing—­the good bellyful,
The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,
And day-long blessed idleness beside! 
“Let’s see what the urchin’s fit for”—­that came next,
Not overmuch their way, I must confess. 
Such a to-do!  They tried me with their books: 
Lord, they’d have taught me Latin in pure waste!
Flower o’ the clove, 110
All the Latin I construe is, “amo” I love!
But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets
Eight years together, as my fortune was,
Watching folk’s faces to know who will fling
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,
And who will curse or kick him for his pains,
Which gentleman processional and fine,
Holding a candle to the Sacrament,
Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch
The droppings of the wax to sell again, 120
Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,
How say I?—­nay, which dog bites?, which lets drop
His bone from the heap of offal in the street—­
Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,
He learns the look of things, and none the less
For admonition from the hunger-pinch. 
I had a store of such remarks, be sure,
Which, after I found leisure, turned to use. 
I drew men’s faces on my copy-books,
Scrawled them within the antiphonary’s marge, 130
Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,
Found eyes and nose and chin for A’s and B’s,
And made a string of pictures of the world
Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,
On the wall, the bench, the door.  The monks looked black. 
“Nay,” quoth the Prior, “turn him out, d’ ye say? 
In no wise.  Lose a crow and catch a lark. 
What if at last we get our man of parts,
We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese
And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine 140
And put the front on it that ought to be!”