Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Old Song: ‘’Tis a dull sight’

Edward Fitzgerald (1809–1883)

’TIS a dull sight

To see the year dying,

When winter winds

Set the yellow wood sighing:

Sighing, O sighing!

When such a time cometh

I do retire

Into an old room

Beside a bright fire:

O, pile a bright fire!

And there I sit

Reading old things,

Of knights and lorn damsels,

While the wind sings—

O, drearily sings!

I never look out

Nor attend to the blast;

For all to be seen

Is the leaves falling fast:

Falling, falling!

But close at the hearth,

Like a cricket, sit I,

Reading of summer

And chivalry—

Gallant chivalry!

Then with an old friend

I talk of our youth—

How ’twas gladsome, but often

Foolish, forsooth:

But gladsome, gladsome!

Or, to get merry,

We sing some old rhyme

That made the wood ring again

In summer time—

Sweet summer time!

Then go we smoking,

Silent and snug:

Naught passes between us,

Save a brown jug—

Sometimes!

And sometimes a tear

Will rise in each eye,

Seeing the two old friends

So merrily—

So merrily!

And ere to bed

Go we, go we,

Down on the ashes

We kneel on the knee,

Praying together!

Thus, then, live I

Till, ’mid all the gloom,

By Heaven! the bold sun

Is with me in the room

Shining, shining!

Then the clouds part,

Swallows soaring between;

The spring is alive,

And the meadows are green!

I jump up like mad,

Break the old pipe in twain

And away to the meadows,

The meadows again!