“Ye lowly cottages wherein we dwelt A ministration of your own was yours; Can I forget you, being, as you were, So beautiful among the pleasant fields In which ye stood? or can I here forget The plain and seemly countenance, with which Ye dealt out your plain comforts? Yet had ye Delights and exultations of your own. Eager, and never weary, we pursued Our home-amusements, by the warm peat-fire, At evening; when, with pencil and smooth slate, In square divisions parcelled out, and all With crosses and with cyphers scribbled o’er, We schemed and puzzled, head opposed to head, In strife too humble to be named in verse; Or round the naked table, snow white deal, Cherry or maple, sate in close array, And to the combat, loo or whist,[D] led on A thick-ribbed army; not, as in the world, Neglected, or ungratefully thrown by, Even for the very service they had wrought, But husbanded thro’ many a long campaign. Uncouth assemblage was it, where no fear Had changed their functions; some plebeian cards Which fate, beyond the promise of their birth, Had dignified, and called to represent The persons of departed potentates. Oh, with what echos on the board they fell! Ironic diamonds,--clubs, hearts, diamonds, spades,-- A congregation piteously akin! Cheap matter offered they for boyish wit, Those sooty knaves, precipitated down, With scoffs and taunts, like Vulcan out of heaven: The paramount ace, a moon in her eclipse, Queens gleaming thro’ their splendour’s last decay, And monarchs surly at the wrongs sustained By royal-visages. Meanwhile, abroad Incessant rain was falling, or the frost Raged bitterly, with keen and silent work; And, interrupting oft that eager game, From under Esthwaits’ splitting scenes of ice The pent up air, struggling to free itself, Gave out, to meadow grounds and hills, a loud Protracted yelling; like the noise of wolves, Howling, in troops, along the Bothnic main.” And, then, as a specimen of the out-door sports, and exercises of his youth, whilst dwelling with his good old dame, he says: