Charles Stuart Calverley

Forever; ’t is a single word! Our rude forefathers deemed it two: Can you imagine so absurd A view?

’T was ever thus from childhood’s hour! My fondest hopes would not decay: I never loved a tree or flower Which was the first to fade away.

The farmer’s daughter hath soft brown hair (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) And I met with a ballad, I can’t say where, That wholly consisted of lines like these.

O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed! To be young once more and bite my thumb At the world and all its cares with you, I’d Give no inconsiderable sum.

I can not sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low; ’T is that I can’t remember how They go.

I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a Dun.

I have a liking old For thee, though manifold Stories, I know, are told Not to thy credit; How one (or two at most) Drops make a cat a ghost—

O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsop, Bass! Names that should be on every infant's tongue! Shall days and months and years and centuries pass, And still your merits be unrecked, unsung? Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass, And wished …

White is the wold, and ghostly The dank and leafless trees; And 'M's and 'N's are mostly Pronounced like 'B's and 'D's: 'Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted, The sheep stands, mute and stolid:

Now the "rosy morn appearing" Floods with light the dazzled heaven; And the schoolboy groans on hearing That eternal clock strike seven:- Now the waggoner is driving Towards the fields his clattering wain;