QUINCE.
BY WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.
EAR a small village in the West,
Where many very worthy people
Eat, drink, play whist, and do their best
To guard from evil church and steeple,
There stood—alas! it stands no more!—
A tenement of brick and plaster,
Of which, for forty years and four,
My good friend Quince was lord and master.
Welcome was he in hut and hall,
To maids and matrons, peers and peasants;
He won the sympathies of all
By making puns and making presents.
Though all the parish were at strife,
He kept his council and his carriage,
And laugh’d, and loved a quiet life,
And shrank from chancery suits and marriage.
Sound was his claret—and his head;
Warm was his double ale—and feelings;
His partners at the whist club said
That he was faultless in his dealings.
He went to church but once a week;
Yet Dr. Poundtext always found him
An upright man who studied Greek,
And liked to see his friends around him.
