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Page 4
But not yet
Was Gervase Lester sobered from the draught
Of heady praises which his friends frothed out
With their young generous measure, when he came
From doing pilgrimage Childe-Harold-wise -
Carrying albeit no more luscious vice
To help him moralize than vanity:
For he was one who never could believe
In Æsop's midden-cock that scraped up pearls
From the rank filth, and who disdained the smutch
Of all ignoble wallowings. He came
To take his natural place among the squires,
Full to the lips of theories and schemes,
Art aspirations, steam appliances,
The poor made rich by schooling, the rich wise
By unlearning what they've learned and going back
To nature's simpler lessons, the tight straps
Of form and custom loosed from each man's girth,
The landlords governing paternally
And seeing that the girls were taught to sew -
Hopes views and facts, all jumbled contra-wise,
Like the housewife's touzle-bag of sewing silks,
From which each several thread may be drawn out
Perfect and put to use, but which, in the whole,
Seems an unpurposed tangle of clipped shreds.
But the squires would not work with him, did good
In a plain charitable way, or else
Let well alone, or maybe ill alone;
Arid wondered how a man who rode to hounds
So pluckily as Lester, got that craze
For newfangled social problems, reasoning
By system like a shallow foreigner;
And baited him with friendly dinner-wit
He thought as solid and as savourless
As their traditionary entrées ... or,
(As he irreverently dared to think),
Their proper-mannered comely wives and girls.
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