Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

When the chaise, on a sudden, roll'd off from your door,
And I thought in my heart I should see you no more,
Since expression, dear doctor, was smother'd in silence;
These lines I address to you, many a mile hence!
A sabbath-day's journey, at least, had we rumbled,
Ere a word to my wife or my children I grumbled:
Nor could I my spirits a long while recover,
Too fond beside Athelstan's palace to hover!
The carriage indeed, as we reach'd Crockernwell,
Had begun with its jostling my spleen to dispel,
When we enter'd the inn by a porch of rude granite,
Strong-pillar'd, whoe'er had the honour to plan it;
Where a damsel, sunburnt as a haycock adust is,
Said, ‘Business that morning was done by the justice:’

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And the justice, I found, was our classic friend Hayter,
At once a proficient in law and in metre;
Tho' rarely, perhaps, the heroics of Greece
Disturb the still brains of a justice-of-peace.
Again fasten'd up, one and all, in the chaise,
To remembrance I call'd our friend's elegant lays,
And in fancy convers'd with my muse-loving comrade,
While my features for joy, as I sat on my bum, ray'd:
Nor had we far travell'd the rocky-rough road,
Ere his verses suggested the thought of an ode;
In which, as I painted druidical stones,
And urns but half-bak'd, full of ashes and bones,
I rais'd up my Britons, to fill with affright
Pale Rome, amid all the scyth'd fury of fight.
Thus wildly I bade the poetical war rage,
High-cleaving the clouds, tho' coop'd up in a carriage!
Yet oft from my real companions a squawl
Brought me down in mid flight, as if shot by a ball!
But before we arriv'd at the town on the Ock,
I felt, my good Sir, a more terrible shock

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Than from squawling or squeaking, my Muse to unhinge,
I felt from Podagra's hot pincers, a twinge;
And begg'd my fond wife, with a visage of woe,
To bind up in flannel my goutified toe!
In the morning, however, I flung off the flannel,
Limp'd forth, and awhile observ'd Ock's foamy channel;
And then was cramm'd into a carriage afresh,
Complaining of stiffness and heat in the flesh.
From Ockinton, fam'd for its sweet little mutton,
At length, with a pair of lame horses, we put on;
Till, greatly exhausted, we view'd thy hoar ruin,
Dunheved! as round thee a tempest was brewing;
And, afterwards, saw the folks lounging at Bodmin,
So sluggish, we christen'd them all, hodmandod-men;
And, eastward of Truro, drove in, to survey
The home where I frolick'd, when childhood was gay.
But why, as no striking adventure befel,
Of my route should I every particular tell?
In short, then, my friend, like a timber-tree shaken,
On the third day at eve I saluted Manaccan.

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And “Here, (I exclaim'd, as I enter'd my parlour)
“Far off from the flatterer, far off from the snarler,
“Secure from the blame or applause of the world,
“Am I deep in the shade of obscurity hurl'd.
“And this do I owe (so the bishop determines)
“To my two most delectable volumes of sermons!
“'Tis for these (but their merits are, sure, over-rated)
“To my snug little vicarage I am collated:
“And for a collation so pretty, from his shop,
“I certainly am much oblig'd to the bishop!”
Of my church I next day got the freehold, you see,
By tolling the bell and by turning the key;
And on Sunday I read myself in, to fatigue
The largest assembly then met in Menege.

Here, then, I'm set down in a building grotesque:
But the scenery around is not unpicturesque.
Of Helford you often have heard—in my parish—
I assure you the niceness of Helford is rarish.
All along on the harbour, the cottages rise
To pleasure the poet's contemplative eyes!

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The fronts cherry-clad, and the roofs are so trim,
That, when the full tide hath flow'd up to the brim
Of the circular bason, we see quite a picture,
Which holds at defiance all critical stricture.
And, within, every board is so white, and each shelf
So glitters with pewter, or glimmers with delf,
The floors so well-sanded, the chimneys so neat,
That I envy the villager such a retreat!
On the steep-curving hill that hangs over the houses,
An orchard here waves, and a heifer there browzes!
Here a plough, as across the crag-furrows it bends,
Perpendicular over a chimney impends!
When, scaling the height, in the road to the church,
We at once leave the low-buried cots in the lurch;
Glance o'er an oak-wood, where the shrill-piercing cry
Of the hawk often blends with the scream of the pie;
And the labour of climbing the mountain-path, close,
Out of breath, with the neat-looking farm of Halvoze,
Whose owners are quickly expected (folks tell us)
To spend here a part of the summer, from Hellas.
Hence appear little fields of hay, fallow, or corn,
That pollards of beech and bald oaklings adorn;

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And yellow furze gilding the extensive horizon,
Fine food for an ass as you ever cast eyes on!
If the country round you (as a writer avows)
So full of rich meads, be fit only for cows;
Since we beat you in furze, as you beat us in grasses,
Our country, I'm sure, is fit only for asses!
And yet, looking back, we observe from this height,
The harbour, like silver, invested with light;
And, darting our eyes from the boat-shadow'd tide
To the coppice that crouds, on the opposite side,
O'er the edge of the water, are pleas'd with each creek
That varies the shore with a beautiful break.

Nor should we the walk to the Dinas despise,
Whence clustering hop-gardens solicit our eyes;
And the smoke that ascends from the hamlet beneath,
To curl thro' the clift in a light-azure wreath;
And the hills far away, spotted over with sheep,
And now, in full prospect, the surge of the deep!
Meantime, from the glebe (which produces some pence—
Full thirty good acres within a ring-fence)
From the glebe, I would say, if we gaze all around,
We, doubtless, may view much diversified ground:

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But chief are we charm'd, if the valley we mark
That stretches away from beneath Coney-park;
Here waving, so rich, a broad sycamore shade;
There, opening at once in a golden-cup'd glade;
Here catching attention, beside a dun hill,
By a flash from the stream of an upper-shot mill;
There leading the sight to a covert so privy,
Thro' a long lane of elms hung with tremulous ivy;
Here deepening, at distance, a thicket of holly
Into gloom, to attract thy lone steps, Melancholy!
And there, far retir'd, to a slanting sunbeam
Disclosing, by sits, the dim source of its stream.

And yet, my dear doctor, enclos'd by a wall,
From the vicarage-house we see nothing at all:
A part of the valley, indeed, so bewitching,
We barely discern from the vicarage-kitchen.

Here, here was I dropt—tho' but ill at my ease
When I felt 'twas amid a cotillion of fleas!
Such a hop tho' I never had witness'd before,
Yet I voted the dance “an incredible bore.”
But how a flea-ball could be held in my parlour,
I could not divine, till I question'd a carle, here,

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Who said 'twas by pigeon-appointment, he heard—
For the pigeons so mightily lov'd Mr. Peard,
That, in bed or at board, to amuse the good man, sirs,
They brought him a flock of these sweet little dancers.

So, after ten years on a curacy past,
It is this, my dear friend, to be vicar at last.
Yet, tho' buried here in the fogs of the south,
My heart, as I write, be quite up in my mouth,
I trace, with fond pleasure, the years I have spent on
The curacy, (lovely retirement!) of Kenton;
Where I tun'd to my Laura sweet sonnets of love,
And a wreath for the pupil of eloquence wove;
Bade the lawns and the woodlands re-echo my strains
Transferr'd to Devonia from Sicily's plains;
And, uniting the poets of Cornwall and Devon,
Prais'd them all with applauses untainted by leaven;
And where, to involve the fair landscape in gloom,
I consign'd my poor Laura's remains to the tomb.

Still, doctor, I've reason to pluck up my spirits,
When I think on my Mary's affection and merits:

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And, whilst I may look to the prospect of greeting,
Now and then, the good friends from whose smiles I'm retreating,
I should deem myself blest in so lovely a wife,
E'en here at Manaccan—tho' hardly for life!