The sexton tolls the knell of David Love,
The funeral train treads slowly thro’ the street,
Old General,[307] wand in hand, with crape above,
Conducts the pageant with demeanour meet.
Now stops the mournful train beside the grave,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds;
Save when the clerk repeats his twanging stave,
And on the coffin fall the pattering moulds;
Save that from yonder grass-surrounded stone,
The whining schoolboy loudly does complain
Of such, as crowding round his mossy throne,
Invade his tottering transitory reign.
Beneath those rugged stones, that corner’s shade,
And trodden grass in rough mis-shapen heap,
(Unless by Friday’s art away convey’d,[308])
In order due, what various bodies sleep.
The call of “coals,” the cry of sooty sweep,
The twist machine[309] loud lumbering over head;
The jacks’ shrill whirring,[310] oft disturbing sleep--
No more shall rouse them from their well-flock’d bed.
For them no more the Indian weed shall burn,
Or bustling landlord fill his beverage rare;
No shopmates hail their comrade’s wish’d return,
Applaud his song, and in his chorus share.
Perhaps in this hard-beaten spot is laid
Some head once vers’d in the mechanic powers,
Hands that the bat at cricket oft have sway’d,
Or won the cup for gooseberries and flowers.
Slow through the streets on tottering footsteps borne,
Muttering his humble ditties he would rove,
Singing “Goose Fair,” [311] or “Tread Mill” where forlorn
Consign’d by Lincoln ’squires trod David Love.
One week I miss’d him from the market-place,
Along the streets where he was wont to be;
Strange voices came, but his I could not trace,
Before the ’Change, nor by Sheep-lane was he.
And now with honour due, in sad array
Slow through the church-yard paths we’ve seen him borne;
Approach and hear (if thou wilt hear) the lay
In which the bard’s departed worth we mourn.