John. He left his wife behind; for so I heard. James. He left her, yes. I met my lady once : 40 A woman like a butt, and harsh as crabs. John. Oh yet but I remember, ten years back- 45 As clean and white as privet when it flowers. At first like dove and dove were cat and dog. 50 Out of her sphere. What betwixt shame and pride, New things and old, himself and her, she sour'd To what she is: a nature never kind! Like men, like manners: like breeds like, they say. Kind nature is the best: those manners next That fit us like a nature second-hand; Which are indeed the manners of the great. John. But I had heard it was this bill that past, And fear of change at home, that drove him hence. 60 James. That was the last drop in the cup of gall. I once was near him, when his bailiff brought 65 Should see the raw mechanic's bloody thumbs Sweat on his blazon'd chairs; but, sir, you know That these two parties still divide the world70 Of those that want, and those that have: and still The same old sore breaks out from age to age With much the same result. Now I myself, A Tory to the quick, was as a boy Destructive, when I had not what I would. 75 I was at school-a college in the South: There lived a flayflint near; we stole his fruit, His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us; We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She, With meditative grunts of much content, 8 Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud. By night we dragg'd her to the college tower From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow, And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd. 85 Large range of prospect had the mother sow, And but for daily loss of one she loved, As one by one we took them-but for thisAs never sow was higher in this world— Might have been happy: but what lot is pure? go We took them all, till she was left alone Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine, And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty. John. They found you out? James. Not they. John. Well-after all What know we of the secret of a man? His nerves were wrong. What ails us, who are sound, Which charts us all in its coarse blacks or whites, As cruel as a schoolboy ere he grows 96 100 EDWIN MORRIS ; OR, THE LAKE. 15 O ME, my pleasant rambles by the lake, See here, my doing: curves of mountain, bridge, When men knew how to build, upon a rock, O me, my pleasant rambles by the lake With Edwin Morris and with Edward Bull The curate; he was fatter than his cure. But Edwin Morris, he that knew the names, Long learned names of agaric, moss and fern, Who forged a thousand theories of the rocks, And once I ask'd him of his early life, 20 25 'My love for Nature is as old as I; But thirty moons, one honeymoon to that, And three rich sennights more, my love for her. 30 My love for Nature and my love for her, Of different ages, like twin-sisters grew, To some full music rose and sank the sun, And some full music seem'd to move and change 35 Or this or something like to this he spoke. Then said the fat-faced curate Edward Bull, 40 |