Page:Poems - Southey (1799) volume 2.djvu/202

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188

And show that something lives. Sure this is better
Than a great hedge of yew that makes it look
All the year round like winter, and for ever
Dropping its poisonous leaves from the under bough
So dry and bare!
OLD MAN.
Ah! so the new Squire thinks
And pretty work he makes of it! what 'tis
To have a stranger come to an old house!
STRANGER.
It seems you know him not?
OLD MAN.
No Sir, not I.
They tell me he's expected daily now,
But in my Lady's time he never came
But once, for they were very distant kin.
If he had played about here when a child
In that fore court, and eat the yew-berries,
And sat in the porch threading the jessamine flowers,
That fell so thick, he had not had the heart
To mar all thus.