And he was kind, and loved to sit
In the low hut or garnish’d cottage,
And praise the farmer’s homely wit,
And share the widow’s homelier pottage:
At his approach complaint grew mild;
And when his hand unbarr’d the shutter,
The clammy lips of fever smiled
The welcome which they could not utter.
He always had a tale for me,
Of Julius Cæsar, or of Venus;
From him I learnt the rule of three,
Cat’s-cradle, leap-frog, and Quæ genus:
I used to singe his powder’d wig,
To steal the staff he put such trust in,
And make the puppy dance a jig,
When he began to quote Augustine.
Alack the change! in vain I look
For haunts in which my boyhood trifled—
The level lawn, the trickling brook,
The trees I climb’d, the beds I rifled:
The church is larger than before;
You reach it by a carriage entry;
It holds three hundred people more,
And pews are fitted up for gentry.
Sit in the Vicar’s seat: you’ll hear
The doctrine of a gentle Johnian,
Whose hand is white, whose tone is clear,
Whose phrase is very Ciceronian.
Where is the old man laid?—look down,
And construe on the slab before you,
“Hie jacet Gvlielmvs Brown,
Vir nullâ non donandus lauru.”
