I HATE that Andrew Jones; he'll breed
His children up to waste and pillage.
I wish the press-gang or the drum
With its tantara sound would come,1
And sweep him from the village!

I said not this, because he loves
Through the long day to swear and tipple;
But for the poor dear sake of one

To whom a foul deed he had done,

A friendless man, a travelling cripple !

For this poor crawling helpless wretch
Some horseman who was passing by,
A penny on the ground had thrown;
But the poor cripple was alone
And could not stoop-no help was nigh.

Inch-thick the dust lay on the ground
For it had long been droughty weather;
So with his staff the cripple wrought
Among the dust till he had brought
The half-pennies together.

It chanced that Andrew passed that way
Just at the time; and there he found
The cripple in the mid-day heat
Standing alone, and at his feet
He saw the penny on the ground.

He stopped and took the penny up:
And when the cripple nearer drew,
Quoth Andrew, "Under half-a-crown,
What a man finds is all his own,
And so, my Friend, good-day to you."

And hence I said, that Andrew's boys
Will all be trained to waste and pillage;
And wished the press-gang, or the drum
With its tantara sound, would come2

And sweep him from the village!

Andrew Jones was included in Lyrical Ballads, 1800, 1802, and 1805 and in the Poems of 1815. It was never republished after 1815.-ED.

[This is described from the life, as I was in the habit of observing when a boy at Hawkshead School. Daniel was more than eighty years older than myself when he was daily, thus occupied, under my notice. No books have so early taught me to think of the changes to which human life is subject, and while looking at him I could not but say to myself—we may, one of us, I or the happiest of my playmates, live to become still more the object of pity than this old man, this half-doating pilferer.]

O NOW that the genius of Bewick* were mine,

And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne, Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose, For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.

* Thomas Bewick, the wood engraver, born at Cherryburn, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, in 1753, died 1828. He revived the art of wood engraving in England; his illustrations, drawn for the General History of British Quadrupeds (1790), and for his own History of British Birds (1797 and 1804), being unrivalled in their way.-ED.

What feats would I work with my magical hand!
Book-learning and books should be banished the land:
And, for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls,
Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.

The traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair;
Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would he care!
For the Prodigal Son, Joseph's Dream and his sheaves,
O, what would they be to my tale of Two Thieves?

The One, yet unbreeched, is not three birthdays old,1
His Grandsire that age more than thirty times told;
There are ninety 2 good seasons of fair and foul weather
Between them, and both go a-pilfering together.3

With chips is the carpenter strewing his floor?
Is a cart-load of turf at an old woman's door?
Old Daniel his hand to the treasure will slide!
And his Grandson's as busy at work by his side.

Old Daniel begins; he stops short-and his eye,
Through the lost look of dotage, is cunning and sly:
"Tis a look which at this time is hardly his own,
But tells a plain tale of the days that are flown.

Little Dan is unbreeched, he is three birthdays old,

1800.

He once1 had a heart which was moved by the wires
Of manifold pleasures and many desires:
And what if he cherished his purse? 'Twas no more
Than treading a path trod by thousands before.

'Twas a path trod by thousands; but Daniel is one
Who went something farther than others have gone,
And now with old Daniel you see how it fares;
You see to what end he has brought his grey hairs.

The pair sally forth hand in hand; ere the sun
Has peered o'er the beeches, their work is begun :
And yet, into whatever sin they may fall,
This child but half knows it, and that, not at all.

They hunt through the streets2 with deliberate tread,
And each, in his turn, becomes leader or led;3
And, wherever they carry their plots and their wiles,
Every face in the village is dimpled with smiles.

Neither checked by the rich nor the needy they roam; For the grey-headed Sire1 has a daughter at home, Who will gladly repair all the damage that's done; And three, were it asked, would be rendered for one.

Old Man whom so oft I with pity have eyed,
I love thee, and love the sweet Boy at thy side:
Long yet may'st thou live for a teacher we see
That lifts up the veil of our nature in thee.

[The principal features are taken from my friend Robert Jones.]

I MARVEL how Nature could ever find space

For so many strange contrasts in one human face :1

There's thought and no thought, and there's paleness and

bloom,

And bustle and sluggishness, pleasure and gloom.

There's weakness, and strength both redundant and vain;

Such strength as, if ever affliction and pain.

Could pierce through a temper that's soft to disease
Would be rational peace-a philosopher's ease.

There's indifference, alike when he fails or succeeds,
And attention full ten times as much as there needs;
Pride where there's no envy, there's so much of joy;
And mildness, and spirit both forward and coy.

There's freedom, and sometimes a diffident stare
Of shame scarcely seeming to know that she's there,
There's virtue, the title it surely may claim,

Yet wants heaven knows what to be worthy the name.

1 1836.

For the weight and the levity seen in that face: 1800.