Classic Poem

Ah! the lichen on the walls
Out in patches, white and red,
Where the creeping ivy crawls
O'er the tree-stems overhead,
Is a token that no throng
Bustles by them all day long,
Ever wearing roadways bare
As they drive the whirling air
Where the way
Is not footless, night or day.

In the ever-busy street,
Where we see no growing grass,
Streaming folk that briskly meet
Throng each other as they pass;
Rubbing wall-sides to a gloss
Where is little soil for moss
That can seldom linger quick
On the ever-fretted brick,
And no seed
Ever quickens to a weed.

Here the words of fewer men
Come with sounds of bird and bee,
And the mossy-nested wren
Flits from ivy on the tree.
And the open sunshine glows
On the lily or the rose,
Leaving shaded air to cool
In the bower, and on the pool:
And a sound
Under others is not drown'd.

There are sire and wife, now old,
And two sons, both hale and lithe;
And two maids of comely mould,
Who are ever kind and blithe.
And whenever maid and son
Shall have mated, one by one,
Then, as peaceful be the life
Of the husband and the wife,
As they all
Have within the garden wall.