The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley :: :: University of Virginia Library

I Trust the worst is over with this sale.
The old place had a strange look in the crowd:
The jostling and the staring and the creak
Of shuffled feet, the public laugh sent round,
The hammer's clink, the flippant auctioneer,
Number on number lengthening out the day:
Familiar things dishonoured, like old friends
Set up on high to scorning fools: and then
The ache of loss, and some dull sense that they

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Would sell me last by parcels, till the dusk
Drew, in December sleet, and all were gone:
And this old wreck bowed at my drooping fire
In gathered shade unfriended and alone.
Bare walls and fixtures here: thus ends the tale.

George Barnes, the thriving farmer, warpt and shrunk
And naked to the bite of wind and wave.
On the blank threshold of his eightieth year,
Ripe for the parish union or the grave.
The man whose name was clean and word was sure,
Dishonoured: pattern farmer of the squire.
The farm of gapless hedge and pasture clean
Without a rush: I, broken, the safe man
As England's bank for credit? when old Groves,
Who never paid a punctual rent, scrapes on,
With his lean kine, like Egypt's plagues, at grass
Where sprouts one blade of herbage to the score
Of rushes stubbled close as urchin quills.

Ye idle sons, ye false and idle sons,
A bitter ending to my careful years
Ye have devised me in your lurcher pride:
Why should ye make me homeless at the last?
Ye knew that thrift had raised the labouring man
A fruitful farmer: your vain wits forgot
The two-roomed cottage of your schooling years;
A labourer's sons to ape at gentlemen:
To drink and racket like the careless heirs
Of noble acres, race and ride to hounds;
Fine clothes, French wines, ill comrades from the town:
And then to come and tell me, that I shamed
Your worships by still working with my men
In these old fields that bought you all your show.
Meanwhile your farms went wrack in bailiffs' hands,
Ye saw to nothing, stinted not, spent on:
Ye never held a plough or bound a sheaf:
Lord, I have seen you ride on harvest days,
Among the smoking reapers, spruce and cool,
Be-gloved and Sunday-coated, vain and gay
As weedy poppies among honest grain.
And so these ran their tether out like lords,
While loan and credit lasted, and one year
Had back to bear the burden of the last
And pass it to another with its own.

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And so they ran their folly to the lees,
And borrowed deeper till their flash studs failed,
And I to save some shreds of our good name
Sat down at four-score beggared—so it runs.

With nought I started and with nothing end:
For I and my old dame in our young days—
Kind soul, she's best in churchyard from these tears—
From her brisk needle and my labourer's wage
Contrived to scrape a little, coin by coin,
Albeit hungry mouths were in our nest
Of growing children, and the wages low.
And after hours I wrought a patch of waste
Into a garden: many helps are found
By those who seek them like midsummer bees
Making the long days longer, and our store
Grew under wary watching like a child.
We bought a cow to pasture in the lanes;
And since occasion helps the helpful man,
The squire's head woodman failing, I came in
Till there was picked another to their mind.
And since I felled as much at lower wage,
And since the bailiff gave me sturdy praise,
And since the squire could light on no one else,
They were content to leave this as it stood,
And no one came above me, so I throve.

And after years a leasehold farm fell in,
The homestead ruinous and the land undrained,
No specious venture; for the dribbling term
Had thrown it lastly to a needy man
Who almost starved upon it, a poor soul
Crippled with ague and consuming sloth.
Thus an ill name, the fault of his neglect,
Clung to the farm and scared the applicants.
Till, last the steward bating of his rents,
I closed the venture, now to stand or fall.
My savings scarce could stock it at the first:
All was awry, and, rood by rood, the land
With stubborn pains reclaimed from careless years,
Set me afield before the sleeping sun.
I dyked the solid marls with sturdy zeal,
Slaved like ten ploughmen in November dwift,
And bent the stubborn fallows to my will.
But at the full fall of the leaf there came

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A bitter season in my second year
With sickness to our cattle, and with pain
We barely weathered through it to the spring.
Once safely through, large store of better days
Succeeded, and above our heads the sun
Of prosperous labour held an even noon.
And days of golden plenty flowed in toil
That set an honest relish on the day,
And gleamy tints by day's unstormy fall
Gave equal promise of to-morrow calm.
And when our children and our store increased
I took this larger farm, reputed first
In all the township. I have made its name
Lose nothing in my keeping, year by year;
I made its good yet better; and I throve.

And as these sons grew men, I said, “The boys
Shall each be started well and have their prime
Unfettered with the clogs that kept me down.
If my tough arms and purpose seat me here,
Why should I toss these troubles to the lads
Of my probation? they shall till their own,
And owe their labour to no man beside,
Lords of their honest strength and sinew sure.”

And spoke unwisely: 'tis a perilous thing
To give a lad some choice of idleness,
And plenty carved too ready at his hand.
Better as I was: this I knew not then:

And as each son came twenty and a year,
Three sons I set them in three farms to thrive,
No farmers better started in the shire.
And thus they have repaid me, like sour weeds
That steal the room and nurture of the grain
Under whose shade and sufferance they are sprung,
And, though they strike no root themselves, contrive
To choke and waste it wholly at the last.

Alas, I erred in being generous.
I could detect no failings in my own:
I thought their hearts were right because their limbs
Were moulded fair, and light was on their face,
The rosy maskings of a feeble core.

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And, one by one, they failed from off the land,
Selfish, unstable, vain, and slothful boys.
See these have dragged me down, and thought no shame
To link an old man's ruin to their own,
If so they could push back a little while
Their imminent destruction, and secure
Some paltry furlough for their evil ways.
They thought it all the same to strip me now
Or wait to wrangle at my monument.
What matter if my few remainder years
Be comfortably furnished, or commended
To parish charity? old age is dull:
A dotard could not taste much difference.
I lodged as ill before I made your gold:
But your nice senses are another thing,
They shall not lack full flush of delicates.
Shall gentlemen be shortened of their ease
While the old clog has yet a coat to lose?

Ay me, these troubles and this weary day
Have loosed my tongue unduly, and revealed
Much grievance better sealed in silent shame.
I am so old no wound can hurt me long.
The future smooths to one both good and blame:
They were my own that wrought their father's fall,
My own, tho' sinning, and these bitter words
Are wrongly spoken by a father's tongue.
Comfort is sure and silence in the grave,
I can abide the bitter interval,
As short as sour, that holds me from my rest.
This desolation and these naked walls
Are seen no longer, for the light is past
From these dead embers: so when I am dead
My thought will dwell no more on any cares.