T Francis Allen's on the Christmas-eve,-
The game of forfeit done-the girls all kiss'd
Beneath the sacred bush and past away-
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honor had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bump'd the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissioners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith
Right thro' the world, "at home was little left,
And none abroad: there was no anchor, none,
To hold by." Francis, laughing, clapt his hand
On Everard's shoulder, with "I hold by him."
'And I," quoth Everard, "by the wassail-bowl."
"Why yes," I said, we knew your gift that way
At college: but another which you had,
I mean of verse (for so we held it then,)
What came of that?" "You know," said Frank, "he burnt
His epic, his King Arthur, some twelve books"-
And then to me demanding why? “Oh, sir,
He thought that nothing new was said, or else
Something so said 'twas nothing-that a truth
Looks freshest in the fashion of the day:
God knows: he has a mint of reasons: ask.