IV.
Dear are the memories of our wedded lives,
Dear also are the outfits of our wives,
And their huge trunks: but this is a sweet change!
For surely now our household hearths are cold,
Charwomen prowl thereby: our halls look strange,
Our suites are swathed like ghosts. Here all is joy,
And, by the stirless silence rendered bold,
The very gulls stand round with furléd wings.
What do you think of it, TOBY, my boy?
The Session's Bills are half-forgotten things.
Is there discussion in our little Isle?
Let Parties broken so remain.
Factions are hard to reconcile:
Prate not of Law and Order—by the main!
There is a fussiness worse than death
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Lost labour, and sheer waste of breath,
Sore task to hearts dead beat by many wars,
And ears grown dumb with listening to loud party jars.