Notes About The Poem
“We look at spirit not at form
Our touch is gentle, kind and warm
We but reflect God’s love and light
‘Tis the path to which we conform” => Prompt for a Poetry Contest Sponsored by Unseeking Seeker
"Simple Simon" is an English-language nursery rhyme - the first of a longer chapbook history first published in 1764. Lines are quoted here and acknowledged.
Listen to poem:
So Spake Simple Simon
A small barefoot boy wandered alone,
beneath the evening sky, dark and gray.
He stopped beside each stranger there,
and asked them how to find the way.
A scholar paused with books in hand,
and spoke of sacred scripts and law.
The child looked up and humbly asked:
“But how do I feel the wonder and awe?”
A merchant said, “Save all your coins,
build your wealth; buy all your dreams.”
The child held out his dirt-stained hands
and asked, “But is it kindness that redeems?”
A soldier said, “You must be strong,
to let your doubts and weakness cease.”
The child reached up and touched his sleeve.
And asked, “But does God not speak of peace?”
A tall pieman with an empty tray went by;
spilling all his stale old bread crumbs.
The child asked, “Can love be re-baked?"
"Can a broken heart be, what it now becomes?”
A widow said, “I lost my love."
"Yet still, each night I kneel and pray."
"Faith is the lamp, that proves the dough,
helping me rise, get through each day.”
A beggar smiled with twisted hands.
Held out to share his one and only crust;
“Faith starts,” he said, “when fear gives way,
to one small act of trust.”
He met a fisherman mending his nets
and asked: "Can I catch a whale in a pail?"
The old man smiled: “Cast only simple nets,
for lost souls are lured by love, not by travail."
The child searched in the thorny fields,
for plums and apples growing wildly free.
The briers pricked at his wandering hands,
while he reached for what he longed to see.
So barefoot, meek, and wondering still,
the lost child trod the homeward sod.
No wiser for the harsh world he'd seen—
yet somehow nearer, perhaps, to his God.
"Simple Simon met a pieman,
Going to the fair;
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
Let me taste your ware."
"Said the pieman to Simple Simon,
Show me first your penny;
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
Sir I haven't any."
"Simple Simon went a-fishing,
For to catch a whale;
All the water he had got,
Was in his mother's pail."
"Simple Simon went to look
If plums grew on a thistle;
He pricked his fingers very much,
Which made poor Simon whistle."
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