Tommy Smith

When summer's languor drugs my veins

And fills with sleep the droning times,

Like sluggish dreams among my brains,

There runs the drollest sort of rhymes,

Idle as clouds that stray through heaven

And vague as if they were a myth,

But in these rhymes is always given

A health for old Bluebritches Smith.

Among my thoughts of what is good

In olden times and distant lands,

Is that do-nothing neighborhood

Where the old cider-hogshead stands

To welcome with its brimming gourd

The canny crowd of kin and kith

Who meet about the bibulous board

Of old Bluebritches Tommy Smith.

In years to come, when stealthy change

Hath stolen the cider-press away

And the gnarled orchards of the grange

Have fallen before a slow decay,

Were I so cunning, I would carve

From some time-scorning monolith

A sculpture that should well preserve

The fame of old Bluebritches Smith.