To which I most resort,
How goes the time? ’T is five o’clock.
Go fetch a pint of port;
But let it not be such as that
You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.”
Dreaming over his glass of wine the poet sees in a sudden vision the prototype of the cock who once brought the head-waiter as a round country boy to the city, to the great bewilderment of his church-tower colleagues who witnessed his audacious flight:—
“His brothers of the weather stood
Stock-still for sheer amazement.”