Christmas: Its Origin and Associations / Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries

by W. F. Dawson

Shall we, thy guests

Meet at those lyric feasts

Made at the Sun,

The Dog, the Triple Tun;

Where we such clusters had

As made us nobly wild, not mad?

And yet each verse of thine

Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine.

In 1629 he accepted the living of Dean Prior, in Devonshire, where he lived as a bachelor Vicar, being ejected by the Long Parliament, returning on the Restoration under Charles the Second, and dying at length at the age of eighty-four. He was buried in the Church at Dean Prior, where a memorial tablet has latterly been erected to his memory. And it is fitting that he should die and be buried in the quiet Devonshire hamlet from which he drew so much of his happiest inspiration, and which will always be associated now with the endless charm of the "Hesperides."