FIVE-AND-TWENTY years have gone

                         Since old William pollexfen

                         Laid his strong bones down in death

                         By his wife Elizabeth

                         In the grey stone tomb he made.

                         And after twenty years they laid

                         In that tomb by him and her

                         His son George, the astrologer;

                         And Masons drove from miles away

                         To scatter the Acacia spray

                         Upon a melancholy man

                         Who had ended where his breath began.

                         Many a son and daughter lies

                         Far from the customary skies,

                         The Mall and Eades's grammar school,

                         In London or in Liverpool;

                         But where is laid the sailor John

                         That so many lands had known,

                         Quiet lands or unquiet seas

                         Where the Indians trade or Japanese?

                         He never found his rest ashore,

                         Moping for one voyage more.

                         Where have they laid the sailor John?

                         And yesterday the youngest son,

                         A humorous, unambitious man,

                         Was buried near the astrologer,

                         Yesterday in the tenth year

                         Since he who had been contented long.

                         A nobody in a great throng,

                         Decided he would journey home,

                         Now that his fiftieth year had come,

                         And "Mr.  Alfred' be again

                         Upon the lips of common men

                         Who carried in their memory

                         His childhood and his famiy.

                         At all these death-beds women heard

                         A visionary white sea-bird

                         Lamenting that a man should die;

                         And with that cry I have raised my cry.