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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=508045" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>English Eclogues I - The Old Mansion-House</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">STRANGER.<br>Old friend! why you seem bent on parish duty,<br>Breaking the highway stones,--and 'tis a task<br>Somewhat too hard methinks for age like yours.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>Why yes! for one with such a weight of years<br>Upon his back. I've lived here, man and boy,<br>In this same parish, near the age of man<br>For I am hard upon threescore and ten.<br>I can remember sixty years ago<br>The beautifying of this mansion here<br>When my late Lady's father, the old Squire<br>Came to the estate.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>Why then you have outlasted<br>All his improvements, for you see they're making<br>Great alterations here.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>Aye-great indeed!<br>And if my poor old Lady could rise up--<br>God rest her soul! 'twould grieve her to behold<br>The wicked work is here.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>They've set about it<br>In right good earnest. All the front is gone,<br>Here's to be turf they tell me, and a road<br>Round to the door. There were some yew trees too<br>Stood in the court.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>Aye Master! fine old trees!<br>My grandfather could just remember back<br>When they were planted there. It was my task<br>To keep them trimm'd, and 'twas a pleasure to me!<br>All strait and smooth, and like a great green wall!<br>My poor old Lady many a time would come<br>And tell me where to shear, for she had played<br>In childhood under them, and 'twas her pride<br>To keep them in their beauty. Plague I say<br>On their new-fangled whimsies! we shall have<br>A modern shrubbery here stuck full of firs<br>And your pert poplar trees;--I could as soon<br>Have plough'd my father's grave as cut them down!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>But 'twill be lighter and more chearful now,<br>A fine smooth turf, and with a gravel road<br>Round for the carriage,--now it suits my taste.<br>I like a shrubbery too, it looks so fresh,<br>And then there's some variety about it.<br>In spring the lilac and the gueldres rose,<br>And the laburnum with its golden flowers<br>Waving in the wind. And when the autumn comes<br>The bright red berries of the mountain ash,<br>With firs enough in winter to look green,<br>And show that something lives. Sure this is better<br>Than a great hedge of yew that makes it look<br>All the year round like winter, and for ever<br>Dropping its poisonous leaves from the under boughs<br>So dry and bare!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>Ah! so the new Squire thinks<br>And pretty work he makes of it! what 'tis<br>To have a stranger come to an old house!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It seems you know him not?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>No Sir, not I.<br>They tell me he's expected daily now,<br>But in my Lady's time he never came<br>But once, for they were very distant kin.<br>If he had played about here when a child<br>In that fore court, and eat the yew-berries,<br>And sat in the porch threading the jessamine flowers,<br>That fell so thick, he had not had the heart<br>To mar all thus.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>Come--come! all a not wrong.<br>Those old dark windows--</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>They're demolish'd too--<br>As if he could not see thro' casement glass!<br>The very red-breasts that so regular<br>Came to my Lady for her morning crumbs,<br>Won't know the window now!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>Nay they were high<br>And then so darken'd up with jessamine,<br>Harbouring the vermine;--that was a fine tree<br>However. Did it not grow in and line<br>The porch?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>All over it: it did one good<br>To pass within ten yards when 'twas in blossom.<br>There was a sweet-briar too that grew beside.<br>My Lady loved at evening to sit there<br>And knit; and her old dog lay at her feet<br>And slept in the sun; 'twas an old favourite dog<br>She did not love him less that he was old<br>And feeble, and he always had a place<br>By the fire-side, and when he died at last<br>She made me dig a grave in the garden for him.<br>Ah I she was good to all! a woful day<br>'Twas for the poor when to her grave she went!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>They lost a friend then?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>You're a stranger here<br>Or would not ask that question. Were they sick?<br>She had rare cordial waters, and for herbs<br>She could have taught the Doctors. Then at winter<br>When weekly she distributed the bread<br>In the poor old porch, to see her and to hear<br>The blessings on her! and I warrant them<br>They were a blessing to her when her wealth<br>Had been no comfort else. At Christmas, Sir!<br>It would have warm'd your heart if you had seen<br>Her Christmas kitchen,--how the blazing fire<br>Made her fine pewter shine, and holly boughs<br>So chearful red,--and as for misseltoe,<br>The finest bough that grew in the country round<br>Was mark'd for Madam. Then her old ale went<br>So bountiful about! a Christmas cask,<br>And 'twas a noble one! God help me Sir!<br>But I shall never see such days again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>Things may be better yet than you suppose<br>And you should hope the best.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>It don't look well<br>These alterations Sir! I'm an old man<br>And love the good old fashions; we don't find<br>Old bounty in new houses. They've destroyed<br>All that my Lady loved; her favourite walk<br>Grubb'd up, and they do say that the great row<br>Of elms behind the house, that meet a-top<br>They must fall too. Well! well! I did not think<br>To live to see all this, and 'tis perhaps<br>A comfort I shan't live to see it long.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>But sure all changes are not needs for the worse<br>My friend.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>OLD MAN.<br>May-hap they mayn't Sir;--for all that<br>I like what I've been us'd to. I remember<br>All this from a child up, and now to lose it,<br>'Tis losing an old friend. There's nothing left<br>As 'twas;--I go abroad and only meet<br>With men whose fathers I remember boys;<br>The brook that used to run before my door<br>That's gone to the great pond; the trees I learnt<br>To climb are down; and I see nothing now<br>That tells me of old times, except the stones<br>In the church-yard. You are young Sir and I hope<br>Have many years in store,--but pray to God<br>You mayn't be left the last of all your friends.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>STRANGER.<br>Well! well! you've one friend more than you're aware of.<br>If the Squire's taste don't suit with your's, I warrant<br>That's all you'll quarrel with: walk in and taste<br>His beer, old friend! and see if your old Lady<br>E'er broached a better cask. You did not know me,<br>But we're acquainted now. 'Twould not be easy<br>To make you like the outside; but within--<br>That is not changed my friend! you'll always find<br>The same old bounty and old welcome there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+Southey">Robert Southey</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=508045" data-title="English Eclogues I - The Old Mansion-House de Robert Southey" data-description="STRANGER.
Old friend! why you seem bent on parish duty,
Breaking the highway stones,--and 'tis a task
Somewhat too hard methinks for age like yours.


OLD MAN.
Why yes! for one with such a weight of years
Upon his back. I've lived here, man and bo..."></div>
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