REUBEN
Always at work! Ah, he knew how to gain,
And how to grasp—and how to turn the key!
Thrift was that call’d? which bid a man of means
With no more youth in his veins, to live himself,
And half expect his helpers would (but they
Were wiser), on his garden-stuff—home-grown,
You see, not piping any pennies out!
Some days again he wholly idled; walked
Twice, to the harbour-town and back, ten miles;
Why—nobody dare ask, for, push’d too far,
He would speak, short and savage.
Till, as mould
O’er objects from the public air’s free touch
Too long reserv’d, there subtly stole and clung
O’er Reuben’s untold motives, leprous films
Of rootless rumour, breaths of thin surmise
That soon, a solid and a monstrous mask,
Disgraced the form they covered. Talk began
Of miser’s craft in Reuben, of bygone
Fatal privation forced on Mercy—sow’d
With gold that much-lov’d garden, and the hands
That dress’d it, dyed with innocent spilt blood.
So ran the village verdict. For the rest,
His dumb indifference gave the parson scope
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