Songs, Merry and Sad

Tommy Smith

     When summer's languor drugs my veins
      And fills with sleep the droning times,
     Like sluggish dreams among my brains,
      There runs the drollest sort of rhymes,
     Idle as clouds that stray through heaven
      And vague as if they were a myth,
     But in these rhymes is always given
      A health for old Bluebritches Smith.

     Among my thoughts of what is good
      In olden times and distant lands,
     Is that do-nothing neighborhood
      Where the old cider-hogshead stands
     To welcome with its brimming gourd
      The canny crowd of kin and kith
     Who meet about the bibulous board
      Of old Bluebritches Tommy Smith.

     In years to come, when stealthy change
      Hath stolen the cider-press away
     And the gnarled orchards of the grange
      Have fallen before a slow decay,
     Were I so cunning, I would carve
      From some time-scorning monolith
     A sculpture that should well preserve
      The fame of old Bluebritches Smith.