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.