Classic Poem

38

To all their ashes peace! And peace to thine,
Proud Crier, huge in triple cape bedight,
And thee, whose voice gave wakeful ears the sign
Of each slow hour that wore the weary night!
Gone, too, I know, is old Manorial Right.
Where is thy Guild, grey Town thy Freemen, where?
Can Fur and Chain thy fancy more delight
Than Borough, Reeve and Constable? Forbear!
Nor pray the scornful Muse to celebrate a — Mayor!

39

Her rather urge in elegiac lay
To mourn forgotten Feasts; when Twelfth Night's been
Proclaimed the Revel's Monarch; or May Day
Decked the gay sweep, and chose the floral Queen.
Few were thy maids at Midsummer, I ween,
But with propitious hemp seed strewed the ground.
Or watched the burning nuts on Hallowe'en:
No swain but Christmas Eve with lamb's wool crown'd;
And shivered in the sun when Candlemas came round.

40

Nor has it pleased thy sons to quite unlearn
All festal records of their father's fame.
Still, when November's misty Nones return,
Thy streets at midnight leap with joyous flame:
The shadowed hills a lurid landscape frame,
As now the blazing tar reveals the slope,
Now rises from the crowd the wild acclaim,
While thy grave Bishop, girt with crook and cope,
Exhorts on fiery pile an unrecanting Pope.

41

But more poetic scenes of pastoral care
Are thine, when all the Weald has ceased to reap,
And Autumn brings the Equinoctial Fair.
Then every downland farm and valley deep,
Thousands on thousands drive their banded sheep;
A wattled camp blockades the green hill-side,
Where each his charge the serge-clad shepherds keep;
A lone, religious race, dark-haired, sad-eyed;
And near, with upward gaze, their ready dogs abide.

42

There may you Damon see with Thyrsis stand,
To sell and buy, if Fortune hit the mean,
Probing the woolly backs with critic hand,
One quick to glory, one to censure keen.
This way and that the vantage seems to lean;
Now tends the conflict to conclusion fair;
But still the doubtful sixpence hangs between;
Once more they part, return, debate, compare —
Then close, and joyful toast the bargain at the " Bear".