Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/110

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HUNTINGTON HOUSE

How dwelt you in your spinsterhood, ye ancient virgins lone,
From infancy to bag-and-muff so resolutely grown?


Each Sunday morning out you drove to Parson Arms's church,
As straight as if Time had not left you somehow in the lurch;
And so lived where your grandfather and father lived and died,
Until you sought them one by one—and last of all stayed pride.


You knew that with them you would lie in that old burial ground
Wherethrough the name of Huntington on vault and stone is found,
Where Norwichtown's first infant male, in sixteen-sixty born,
Grave Christopher, still rests beneath his cherub carved forlorn.


There sleep your warlike ancestors, their feet toward the east,

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