Came from a grizzled cripple, whom I saw
Sunning himself in a waste field alone--
Old, and a mine of memories--who had served,
Long since, a bygone Rector of the place,
And been himself a part of what he told.

Sir Aylmer Aylmer that almighty man,
The county God--in whose capacious hall,
Hung with a hundred shields, the family tree
Sprang from the midriff of a prostrate king--
Whose blazing wyvern weathercock'd the spire,
Stood from his walls and wing'd his entry-gates
And swang besides on many a windy sign--
Whose eyes from under a pyramidal head
Saw from his windows nothing save his own--
What lovelier of his own had he than her,
His only child, his Edith, whom he loved
As heiress and not heir regretfully?
But `he that marries her marries her name'
This fiat somewhat soothed himself and wife,
His wife a faded beauty of the Baths,
Insipid as the Queen upon a card;
Her all of thought and bearing hardly more
Than his own shadow in a sickly sun.

A land of hops and poppy-mingled corn,
Little about it stirring save a brook!
A sleepy land where under the same wheel
The same old rut would deepen year by year;
Where almost all the village had one name;