Not even this peculiar town Has ever fixed a friendship firmer, But--one is married, one’s gone down, And one’s a Don, and one’s in Burmah. * * * * * And oh! the days, the days, the days, When all the four were off together: The infinite deep of summer haze, The roaring charge of autumn weather! * * * * * I will not try the reach again, I will not set my sail alone, To moor a boat bereft of men At Yarnton’s tiny docks of stone. But I will sit beside the fire, And put my hand before my eyes, And trace, to fill my heart’s desire, The last of all our Odysseys. The quiet evening kept her tryst: Beneath an open sky we rode, And passed into a wandering mist Along the perfect Evenlode. The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stones, Forgotten in the western wolds * * * * * I dare to think (though meaner powers Possess our thrones, and lesser wits Are drinking worser wine than ours, In what’s no longer Austerlitz) That surely a tremendous ghost, The brazen-lunged, the bumper-filler, Still sings to an immortal toast, The Misadventures of the Miller. The unending seas are hardly bar To men with such a prepossession: We were? Why then, by God, we _are_-- Order! I call the Club to session! You do retain the song we set, And how it rises, trips and scans? You keep the sacred memory yet, Republicans? Republicans? You know the way the words were hurled, To break the worst of fortune’s rub? I give the toast across the world, And drink it, “Gentlemen: the Club.” FOOTNOTES: [1] But do not think I shall explain To any great extent. Believe me, I partly write to give you pain, And if you do not like me, leave me. [2] And least of all can you complain, Reviewers, whose unholy trade is, To puff with all your might and main Biographers of single ladies. [3] Never mind. [4] The plan forgot (I know not how, Perhaps the Refectory filled it), To put a chapel in; and now We’re mortgaging the rest to build it. DEDICATION ON THE GIFT OF A BOOK TO A CHILD Child! do not throw this book about! Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure. Child, have you never heard it said That you are heir to all the ages? Why, then, your hands were never made To tear these beautiful thick pages! Your little hands were made to take The better things and leave the worse ones: They also may be used to shake The Massive Paws of Elder Persons.