There silent sit, and all at once is hush.”
He says little more than enough to make us feel how much he could have said if—well, if, for example, he had been the sort of man to wish to employ his flail, not to drown the master’s curses, but to break his head. But he was ineffectual, if not beautiful. The only known material effect of his verse was to draw charity from Lord Palmerston for providing an annual threshers’ dinner, which is still given at Charlton on June 30. This feast proves him greater as prophet than as poet in writing,—
“Oft as this Day returns, shall Temple cheer
The Threshers’ Hearts with Mutton, Beef, and Beer;
Hence, when their Children’s Children shall admire
This Holiday, and, whence deriv’d, inquire,
Some grateful Father, partial to my Fame,
Shall thus describe from whence, and how it came:
‘Here, Child, a Thresher liv’d in ancient Days;
Quaint Songs he sung, and pleasing Roundelays;