The Vicar
SOME years ago, ere time and taste
Had turn’d our parish topsy-turvy,
When Darnel Park was Darnel Waste,
And roads as little known as scurvy,
The man who lost his way between
St. Mary’s Hill and Sandy Thicket
Was always shown across the green,
And guided to the parson’s wicket.
Back flew the bolt of lissom lath;
Fair Margaret, in her tidy kirtle,
Led the lorn traveller up the path
Through clean-clipp’d rows of box and myrtle;
And Don and Sancho, Tramp and Tray,
Upon the parlor steps collected,
Wagg’d all their tails, and seem’d to say,
“Our master knows you; you ’re expected.”
Up rose the reverend Doctor Brown,
Up rose the doctor’s “winsome marrow;”
The lady laid her knitting down,
Her husband clasp’d his ponderous Barrow.
Whate’er the stranger’s caste or creed,
Pundit or papist, saint or sinner,
He found a stable for his steed,
And welcome for himself, and dinner.
If, when he reach’d his journey’s end,
And warm’d himself in court or college,
He had not gain’d an honest friend,
And twenty curious scraps of knowledge;
If he departed as he came,
With no new light on love or liquor,—
Good sooth, the traveller was to blame,
And not the vicarage, nor the vicar.
His talk was like a stream which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses;
It slipp’d from politics to puns;
It pass’d from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels or shoeing horses.
He was a shrewd and sound divine,
Of loud dissent the mortal terror;
And when, by dint of page and line,
He ’stablish’d truth or startled error,
The Baptist found him far too deep,
[...] Read more
poem by Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
