If, when he reach’d his journey’s end,
    And warm’d himself in court or college,
  He had not gain’d an honest friend,
    And twenty curious scraps of knowledge;—­
  If he departed as he came,
    With no new light on love or liquor,—­
  Good sooth, the traveller was to blame,
    And not the vicarage, nor the vicar.

  His talk was like a stream which runs
    With rapid change from rocks to roses: 
  It slipp’d from politics to puns;
    It pass’d from Mahomet to Moses: 
  Beginning with the laws which keep
    The planets in their radiant courses,
  And ending with some precept deep
    For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.

  He was a shrewd and sound divine,
    Of loud dissent the mortal terror;
  And when, by dint of page and line,
    He ’stablish’d truth, or startled error,
  The Baptist found him far too deep,
    The Deist sigh’d with saving sorrow;
  And the lean Levite went to sleep,
    And dream’d of tasting pork to-morrow.

  His sermon never said or show’d
    That earth is foul, that heaven is gracious,
  Without refreshment on the road
    From Jerome, or from Athanasius: 
  And sure a righteous zeal inspired
    The hand and head that penn’d and plann’d them;
  For all who understood admired,
    And some who did not understand them.

  He wrote too, in a quiet way,
    Small treatises, and smaller verses;
  And sage remarks on chalk and clay. 
    And hints to noble lords and nurses: 
  True histories of last year’s ghost,
    Lines to a ringlet, or a turban;
  And trifles for the Morning Post,
    And nothings for Sylvanus Urban.

  He did not think all mischief fair,
    Although he had a knack of joking;
  He did not make himself a bear,
    Although he had a taste for smoking: 
  And when religious sects ran mad,
    He held, in spite of all his learning,
  That if a man’s belief is bad,
    It will not be improved by burning.

  And he was kind, and loved to sit
    In the low hut or garnish’d cottage,
  And praise the farmer’s homely wit,
    And share the widow’s homelier pottage: 
  At his approach complaint grew mild;
    And when his hand unbarr’d the shutter,
  The clammy lips of fever smiled
    The welcome, which they could not utter.

  He always had a tale for me
    Of Julius Caesar, or of Venus;
  From him I learn’d the rule of three,
    Cat’s cradle, leap-frog, and Quae genus: 
  I used to singe his powder’d wig,
    To steal the staff he put such trust in;
  And make the puppy dance a jig,
    When he began to quote Augustin.

  Alack the change! in vain I look
    For haunts in which my boyhood trifled;
  The level lawn, the trickling brook,
    The trees I climb’d, the beds I rifled: 
  The church is larger than before;
    You reach it by a carriage entry;
  It holds three hundred people more,
    And pews are fitted up for gentry.