This gives him the fancy of one that is young, More of soul in his face than of words on his tongue; What's a tempest to him, or the dry parching heats? Where proud Covent-garden, in desolate hours Of snow and hoar-frost, spreads her fruits and her flowers, Old Adam will smile at the pains that have made 'Mid coaches and chariots, a waggon of straw, Like a magnet, the heart of old Adam can draw; With a thousand soft pictures his memory will teem, And his hearing is touched with the sounds of a dream. Up the Haymarket hill he oft whistles his way, But chiefly to Smithfield he loves to repair,- Now farewell, old Adam! when low thou art laid, 1803. III. THE SMALL CELANDINE. THERE is a Flower, the lesser Celandine, That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain ; When hailstones have been falling, swarm on swarm, Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest, In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest. But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice, But its necessity in being old. * The rural heart of the old man, preserved even amid the din and distraction of London, is admirably described. The poem is no doubt open to critical cavil; but then we should take into account the intimation of the first stanza. The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue." To be a Prodigal's Favourite-then, worse truth, O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth 1804. IV. ANIMAL TRANQUILLITY AND DECAY.* THE little hedgerow birds, That peck along the road, regard him not. A man who does not move with pain, but moves To settled quiet he is one by whom : All effort seems forgotten; one to whom Long patience hath such mild composure given, To peace so perfect that the young behold 1798. *This is perhaps one of the most perfect pictures of the quiet of old age that ever was given in words; yet it was composed by a poet of eight and twenty ! O NOW that the genius of Bewick were mine, And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne, Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose, For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose. What feats would I work with my magical hand! The traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair ; Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would he care! For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his sheaves, Oh, what would they be to my tale of two Thieves ? The One, yet unbreeched, is not three birthdays old,* His Grandsire that age more than thirty times told; There are ninety good seasons of fair and foul weather Between them, and both go a-pilfering together. With chips is the carpenter strewing his floor? • Little Dan is unbreeched, he is three birth days old.-Edit. 1815. Old Daniel his hand to the treasure will slide! Old Daniel begins; he stops short-and his eye, He once had a heart which was moved by the wires 'Twas a path trod by thousands; but Daniel is one The pair sally forth hand in hand: ere the sun This child but half knows it, and that not at all. They hunt through the streets with deliberate tread, Neither checked by the rich nor the needy they roam; For the grey-headed Sire has a daughter at home,* Who will gladly repair all the damage that's done ; And three, were it asked, would be rendered for one. * For grey-headed Dan has a daughter at home.-Edit. 1815. |