Thus thirty smooth years did he thrive on his farm:

The Genius of plenty preserved him from

harm:

30

At length, what to most is a season of sorrow, His means are run out,―he must beg, or must borrow.

To the neighbours he went,—all were free with their money;

For his hive had so long been replenished with

honey,

35

That they dreamt not of dearth;-He continued his rounds, Knocked here-and knocked there, pounds still adding to pounds.

He paid what he could with his ill-gotten pelf, And something, it might be, reserved for himself:

Then (what is too true) without hinting a word, Turned his back on the country-and off like a

bird.

40

You lift up your eyes!-but I guess that you

frame

A judgment too harsh of the sin and the shame;

In him it was scarcely a business of art,
For this he did all in the ease of his heart.

45

To London-a sad emigration I ween
With his grey hairs he went from the brook

and the green;

And there, with small wealth but his legs and his hands,

As lonely he stood as a crow on the sands.

All trades, as need was, did old Adam

assume,

Served as stable-boy, errand-boy, porter, and groom;

But nature is gracious, necessity kind,

50

And, in spite of the shame that may lurk in his mind,

He seems ten birthdays younger, is green and is stout;

Twice as fast as before does his blood run about;

You would say that each hair of his beard was

alive,

And his fingers are busy as bees in a hive.

55

For he's not like an Old Man that leisurely

goes

About work that he knows, in a track that he knows:

But often his mind is compelled to demur, And you guess that the more then his body must stir.

60

In the throng of the town like a stranger is

he,

Like one whose own country's far over the

sea;

And Nature, while through the great city he hies,

Full ten times a day takes his heart by surprise.

This gives him the fancy of one that is young, More of soul in his face than of words on his 66

tongue;

Like a maiden of twenty he trembles and sighs, And tears of fifteen will come into his eyes.

What's a tempest to him, or the dry parching heats?

Yet he watches the clouds that pass over the

streets;

70

With a look of such earnestness often will

stand,

You might think he'd twelve reapers at work in the Strand.

Where proud Covent-garden, in desolate hours Of snow and hoar-frost, spreads her fruits and her flowers,

Old Adam will smile at the pains that have

made

75

Poor winter look fine in such strange masque

rade.

'Mid coaches and chariots, a waggon of straw, Like a magnet, the heart of old Adam can draw;

With a thousand soft pictures his memory will teem,

And his hearing is touched with the sounds of a dream.

80

Up the Haymarket hill he oft whistles his way, Thrusts his hands in a waggon, and smells at the hay;

He thinks of the fields he so often hath mown, And is happy as if the rich freight were his

own.

But chiefly to Smithfield he loves to repair,- 85 If you pass by at morning, you'll meet with

him there.

The breath of the cows you may see him inhale, And his heart all the while is in Tilsbury Vale.

Now farewell, old Adam! when low thou art

laid,

May one blade of grass spring over thy head; 90 And I hope that thy grave, wheresoever it be, Will hear the wind sigh through the leaves of a tree.

1803.

III.

THE SMALL CELANDINE.

THERE is a Flower, the lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and

rain;

And, the first moment that the sun may shine, Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again!

When hailstones have been falling, swarm on

swarm,

Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest,
Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm,
In close self-shelter, like a Thing at rest.

5

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I passed And recognised it, though an altered form, 10 Now standing forth an offering to the blast, And buffeted at will by rain and storm.

I stopped, and said with inly-muttered voice, It doth not love the shower, nor seek the

cold:

This neither is its courage nor its choice, 15 But its necessity in being old.

"The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew; It cannot help itself in its decay;

Stiff in its members, withered, changed of hue.” And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey. 20

To be a Prodigal's Favourite-then, worse

truth,

A Miser's Pensioner-behold our lot!

O Man, that from thy fair and shining youth Age might but take the things Youth needed

not!

IV.

1804.

THE TWO THIEVES;

OR,

THE LAST STAGE OF AVARICE.

O NOW that the genius of Bewick were mine, And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne,

Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,

For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.

What feats would I work with my magical

hand!

5

Book-learning and books should be banished the land:

And, for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls,

Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.

The traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair;

Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would he care!

For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his

sheaves,