But all was vain; and while decay
Came like a tranquil moonlight o’er him,
And found him gouty still and gay,
With no fair nurse to bless or bore him,
His rugged smile and easy-chair,
His dread of matrimonial lectures,
His wig, his stick, his powder’d hair,
Were themes for very strange conjectures.
Some sages thought the stars above
Had crazed him with excess of knowledge;
Some heard he had been crost in love
Before he came away from college;
Some darkly hinted that his Grace
Did nothing great or small without him;
Some whisper’d with a solemn face
That there was “something odd about him!”
I found him, at threescore and ten,
A single man, but bent quite double:
Sickness was coming on him then,
To take him from a world of trouble.
He prosed of slipping down the hill,
Discovered he grew older daily:
One frosty day he made his will;
The next he sent for Doctor Bailey.
And so he lived, and so he died!—When
last I sat beside his pillow,
He shook my hand, and “Ah!” he cried,
“Penelope must wear the willow.
Tell her I hugg’d her rosy chain
While life was flickering in the socket;
And say that when I call again,
I’ll bring a license in my pocket.