Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems including a Reprint of Echoes from Theocritus: By Wilfred Austin Gill: With a Critical Estimate of the Sonnets by the late John Addington Symonds |
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ODE
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 | Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems |  |
155
ODE
On a prospect (not distant) of being ploughed a second time
O Plough, it is long since I met you,
So cruelly keen in the “schools,”
But still I could never forget you,
“Forget” is the tonic of fools.
So cruelly keen in the “schools,”
But still I could never forget you,
“Forget” is the tonic of fools.
Ah, then I was youthful and tender,
And yours was a terrible name;
If my knowledge of grammar was slender,
I still kept a feeling of shame.
And yours was a terrible name;
If my knowledge of grammar was slender,
I still kept a feeling of shame.
Afresh you would like to make tingle
Every nerve in my system: in vain!
Your triumph is over,—'twas single;
You cannot enjoy it again.
Every nerve in my system: in vain!
Your triumph is over,—'twas single;
You cannot enjoy it again.
To-day I am tougher and older,
My freshness has vanished, and now,
With a back that is hard as a boulder,
I laugh at your malice, O Plough!
My freshness has vanished, and now,
With a back that is hard as a boulder,
I laugh at your malice, O Plough!
November 1876.
| Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems | |