“The preacher hath said it—For all things a time—
For fasting, for feasting, for dancing, for rhyme:—
No rhymes without reason shall hinder our pleasure;
We’ll crown the old May-pole, and tread the old measure.”
This done, he again thought of Cuthbert’s bed of suffering, and remembered him in his prayers. This little cross occurrence in his parish neither drove away his own sleep for a second nor delayed on the morrow the sports of his parishioners. Here, as in many other places, the popular and wise course of the minister preserved a good and happy understanding among the people. There is no social state more truly desirable than that of a well-ordered village population, where the miseries of the lane and the alley cannot reach; labour is performed in the open air; festivals are days of thanksgiving, danced through upon a green sward, to the nodding heads of merry musicians; and they see no crowns but such as are woven with roses for their May-queen, and know no sceptre but a white wand wreathed about with fragrant flowers.
CHAP. VIII.
Though their voices lower be,
Streams have, too, their melody;