Читать книгу History of Madeley including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and Coalport онлайн

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His grandfather could just remember back

When they were planted there. It was my task

To keep them trimmed, and ’twas a pleasure to me;

My poor old lady many a time would come

And tell me where to clip, for she had played

In childhood under them, and ’twas her pride

To keep them in their beauty.

* * * * *

I could as soon

Have ploughed my father’s grave as cut them down.

Then those old dark windows—

They’re demolished too;

The very redbreasts that so regular

Came to my lady for her morning crumbs

Won’t know those windows now.

There was a sweet briar, too, that grew beside;

My lady loved at evening to sit there

And knit, and her old dog lay at her feet,

And slept in the sun; ’twas an old favourite dog.

She did not love him less that he was old

And feeble, and he always had a place

By the fireside; and when he died at last,

She made me dig a grave in the garden for him,

For she was good to all: a woeful day

’Twas for the poor when to the grave she went.

—At Christmas, sir!