THE OLD MANOR HOUSE. SET by the pavement, old among
the new, Its blackened front commands a dismal view, And for itself its narrow garden lies Open to every passing lounger's eyes.
They laid the sturdy old foundations here When England stood half for the Chevalier And half for Hanover, in courtly days Of stilted compliment and Tatler phrase.
No ruin this, no skeleton of stone, With bramble and with ivy overgrown, With sparrows nesting in the broken walls And sheep that pasture in the roofless halls.
Solid and square it faces sun and shower As sound as when Sir Robert was in power, For that revenge which Time will never miss Hath taken here a stranger shape than this.
Once, years agone, the master of the land A noble prospect from his threshold scanned, Pasture and ploughland, wooded bluff and down, And heard far-off the murmur of the town.
The busy, restless town, a mile away, That burst its bounds, and ever day by day, While Labour sweated and Invention woke, Crept nearer hidden in a pall of smoke. The squires, it may be, drave their bargains hard, Yet lost their stretching acres; yard by yard, And soon where cattle splashed the morning dew, Mean little street and bandbox villa grew.
Till now of all its policies bereft, A strip of turf, a belt of roses left, And frowning on this growth of modern hands Hard by the common thoroughfare it stands.
While this last message from the days gone by Remains, that when the South wind's passing sigh Divides the creeper leaves above the gate Cat in the crumbling stone you read the date.
ALFRED COCHRANE.
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