Classic Poem

Would you change, my dear Tom, your old mode of proceeding,
And make a dull end to a passage worth reading, —
I mean, would you learn how to let your wit down,
You'd walk some fine morning from Hampstead to town.

What think you of going by gardens and bowers,
Through fields of all colours, refreshed by night-showers —
Some spotted with hay-cocks, some dark with ploughed mould,
Some changed by the mower from green to pale gold, —
A scene of ripe sunshine the hedges betwixt,
With here and there farm-houses, tree-intermixed,
And an air in your face, ever fanning and sweet,
And the birds in your ears, and a turf for your feet; —
And then, after all, to encounter a throng of
Canal-men, and hod-men, unfit to make song of,
Midst ale-houses, puddles, and backs of street-roads,
And all sorts of rubbish, and crashing cart-loads,
And so on, eye-smarting, and ready to choke,
Till you end in hot narrowness, clatter, and smoke!

'Tis Swift after Spenser, or daylight with candles,
A sea-song succeeding a pastoral of Handel's,
A step unexpected, that jars one's inside,
The shout-raising fall at the end of a slide,
A yawn to a kiss, a flock followed by dust,
The hoop of a beauty seen after her bust,
A reckoning, a parting, a snake in the grass,
A time when a man says, " What! Come to this pass!"