Tommy Smith
When summer’s languor drugs my veinsAnd fills with sleep the droning times,Like sluggish dreams among my brains,There runs the drollest sort of rhymes,Idle as clouds that stray through heavenAnd vague as if they were a myth,But in these rhymes is always givenA health for old Bluebritches Smith.
Among my thoughts of what is goodIn olden times and distant lands,Is that do-nothing neighborhoodWhere the old cider-hogshead standsTo welcome with its brimming gourdThe canny crowd of kin and kithWho meet about the bibulous boardOf old Bluebritches Tommy Smith.
In years to come, when stealthy changeHath stolen the cider-press awayAnd the gnarled orchards of the grangeHave fallen before a slow decay,Were I so cunning, I would carveFrom some time-scorning monolithA sculpture that should well preserveThe fame of old Bluebritches Smith.