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.