In this category:

    FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
    POETRY ARCHIVE
    Archive O-P
    FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
    FICTION & NONFICTION ARCHIVE
    Archive O-P
    FICTION & NON-FICTION - books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets
    BOOKS
    George Orwell
    FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY - classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc.
    EDITOR'S CHOICE
    Orwell, George

New on FdM

  1. Marriage Morning by Alfred Lord Tennyson
  2. Christine de Pisan: Belle, ce que j’ay requis
  3. Marina Abramović in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
  4. Spring by Christina Georgina Rossetti
  5. Kira Wuck: Koeiendagen (Gedichten)
  6. Paul Bezembinder: Na de dag
  7. Wound Is the Origin of Wonder by Maya C. Popa
  8. Woman’s Constancy by John Donne
  9. Willa Cather: I Sought the Wood in Winter
  10. Emma Lazarus: Work

Or see the index

All categories

  1. AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE (11)
  2. AUDIO, CINEMA, RADIO & TV (217)
  3. DANCE & PERFORMANCE (59)
  4. DICTIONARY OF IDEAS (178)
  5. EXHIBITION – art, art history, photos, paintings, drawings, sculpture, ready-mades, video, performing arts, collages, gallery, etc. (1,496)
  6. FICTION & NON-FICTION – books, booklovers, lit. history, biography, essays, translations, short stories, columns, literature: celtic, beat, travesty, war, dada & de stijl, drugs, dead poets (3,761)
  7. FLEURSDUMAL POETRY LIBRARY – classic, modern, experimental & visual & sound poetry, poetry in translation, city poets, poetry archive, pre-raphaelites, editor's choice, etc. (4,685)
  8. LITERARY NEWS & EVENTS – art & literature news, in memoriam, festivals, city-poets, writers in Residence (1,602)
  9. MONTAIGNE (110)
  10. MUSEUM OF LOST CONCEPTS – invisible poetry, conceptual writing, spurensicherung (54)
  11. MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY – department of ravens & crows, birds of prey, riding a zebra, spring, summer, autumn, winter (177)
  12. MUSEUM OF PUBLIC PROTEST (136)
  13. MUSIC (216)
  14. PRESS & PUBLISHING (90)
  15. REPRESSION OF WRITERS, JOURNALISTS & ARTISTS (111)
  16. STORY ARCHIVE – olv van de veestraat, reading room, tales for fellow citizens (16)
  17. STREET POETRY (46)
  18. THEATRE (185)
  19. TOMBEAU DE LA JEUNESSE – early death: writers, poets & artists who died young (346)
  20. ULTIMATE LIBRARY – danse macabre, ex libris, grimm & co, fairy tales, art of reading, tales of mystery & imagination, sherlock holmes theatre, erotic poetry, ideal women (222)
  21. WAR & PEACE (124)
  22. · (2)

Or see the index



  1. Subscribe to new material: RSS

George Orwell: A dressed man and a naked man

 

A dressed man
and a naked man

A dressed man and a naked man
Stood by the kip-house fire,
Watching the sooty cooking-pots
That bubble on the wire;

And bidding tanners up and down,
Bargaining for a deal,
Naked skin for empty skin,
Clothes against a meal.

‘Ten bob it is,’ the dressed man said,
‘These boots cost near a pound,
This coat’s a blanket of itself.
When you kip on the frosty ground.’

‘One dollar,’ said the naked man,
‘And that’s a hog too dear;
I’ve seen a man strip off his shirt
For a fag and a pot of beer.’

‘Eight and a tanner,’ the dressed man said,
‘And my life-work is yours,
All I’ve earned at the end of a life
Knocking at farmers’ doors;

Turnips, apples, hops and peas,
And the spike when times are slack,
Fifty years I’ve tobied it
For these clothes upon my back.’

‘Take seven,’ said the naked man,
‘It’s cold and the spikes are shut;
Better be naked here in kip
Than dressed in Lambeth Cut.’

‘One tanner more,’ the dressed man said,
‘One tanner says the word,
Off comes my coat of ratcatcher
And my breeches of velvet cord;

Now pull my shirt over my head,
I’m naked sole to crown,
And that’s the end of fifty years
Tobying up and down.’

A minute and they had changed about,
And each had his desire;
A dressed man and a naked man
Stood by the kip-house fire.

George Orwell
(1903 – 1950)
The Adelphi Magazine. October 1933

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: Archive O-P, Archive O-P, George Orwell, Orwell, George

Previous and Next Entry

« | »

Thank you for reading Fleurs du Mal - magazine for art & literature