THE OLD GOVERNMENT CLERK.
We knew an old Scribe, it was "once on a time,"—
An era to set sober datists despairing;—
Then let them despair! Darby sat in a chair
Near the Cross that gave name to the village of Charing.
Though silent and lean, Darby was not malign,—
What hair he had left was more silver than sable;—
He had also contracted a curve in his spine
From bending too constantly over a table.
His pay and expenditure, quite in accord,
Were both on the strictest economy founded;
His masters were known as the Sealing-wax Board,
Who ruled where red tape and snug places abounded.
In his heart he looked down on this dignified knot,—
For why, the forefather of one of these senators,
A rascal concerned in the Gunpowder Plot,
Had been barber-surgeon to Darby's progenitors.
Poor fool! Life is all a vagary of Luck,—
Still, for thirty long years of genteel destitution
He'd been writing State Papers, which means he had stuck
Some heads and some tails to much circumlocution.
This sounds rather weary and dreary; but, no!
Though strictly inglorious, his days were quiescent,
His red-tape was tied in a true-lover's bow
Each night when returning to Rosemary Crescent.
There Joan meets him smiling, the young ones are there,
His coming is bliss to the half-dozen wee things;
Of his advent the dog and the cat are aware,
And Phyllis, neat-handed, is laying the tea-things.
East wind! sob eerily! sing, kettle! cheerily!
Baby's abed,—but its father will rock it;
Little ones boast your permission to toast
The cake that good fellow brought home in his pocket.
This greeting the silent old Clerk understands,—
His friends he can love, had he foes, he could mock them;
So met, so surrounded, his bosom expands,—
Some tongues have more need of such scenes to unlock them.
And Darby, at least, is resigned to his lot,
And Joan, rather proud of the sphere he's adorning,
Has well-nigh forgotten that Gunpowder Plot,
And he won't recall it till ten the next morning.
A kindly good man, quite a stranger to fame,
His heart still is green, though his head shows a hoar lock;
Perhaps his particular star is to blame,—
It may be, he never took time by the forelock.
A day must arrive when, in pitiful case,
He will drop from his Branch, like a fruit more than mellow;
Is he yet to be found in his usual place?
Or is he already forgotten, poor fellow?
If still at his duty he soon will arrive,—
He passes this turning because it is shorter,—
If not within sight as the clock's striking five,
We shall see him before it is chiming the quarter.