Classic Poem

A F RAGMENT

I love each verse and tune that fills
A nook among the vales and hills
And all the sweetness that belongs
To Sussex and to Surrey songs
I like to hear the countrymen
Chasing Beau Reynolds once again,
Praising once more the Painful Plough,
The cottage maiden's Spotted Cow,
Punch Ladle, strong Tobacco smoke,
And that good ship the Royal Oak .
For still in bottom and in hurst
The old folk sing the songs that first
When they were young, seemed sweet to them,
With croaking voice, and black pipe stem
Beating in time; by cottage fires
Eighty will chant eighteen's desires,
— Old trees remembering to the last
The Seeds of Love so long gone past.