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| IN the sweet shire of Cardigan, | |
| Not far from pleasant Ivor Hall, | |
| An old man dwells, a little man, | |
| I’ve heard he once was tall. | |
| Full five-and-thirty years he lived | 5 |
| A running huntsman merry; | |
| And still the centre of his cheek | |
| Is red as a ripe cherry. | |
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| No man like him the horn could sound, | |
| And hill and valley rang with glee, | 10 |
| When Echo bandied, round and round, | |
| The halloo of Simon Lee. | |
| In those proud days he little cared | |
| For husbandry of or tillage; | |
| To blither tasks did Simon rouse | 15 |
| The sleepers of the village. | |
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| He all the country could outrun, | |
| Could leave both man and horse behind; | |
| And often, ere the chase was done, | |
| He reel’d and was stone-blind. | 20 |
| And still there’s something in the world | |
| At which his heart rejoices; | |
| For when the chiming hounds are out, | |
| He dearly loves their voices. | |
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| But O the heavy change!—bereft | 25 |
| Of health, strength, friends and kindred; see | |
| Old Simon to the world is left | |
| In liveried poverty: | |
| His master’s dead, and no one now | |
| Dwells in the Hall of Ivor; | 30 |
| Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead; | |
| He is the sole survivor. | |
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| And he is lean and he is sick, | |
| His body, dwindled and awry, | |
| Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; | 35 |
| His legs are thin and dry. | |
| He has no son, he has no child, | |
| His wife, an aged woman, | |
| Lives with him, near the waterfall, | |
| Upon the village common. | 40 |
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| Beside their moss-grown hut of clay, | |
| Not twenty paces from the door, | |
| A scrap of land they have, but they | |
| Are poorest of the poor. | |
| This scrap of land he from the heath | 45 |
| Enclosed when he was stronger; | |
| But what avails the land to them | |
| Which he can till no longer? | |
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| Oft, working by her husband’s side, | |
| Ruth does what Simon cannot do; | 50 |
| For she, with scanty cause for pride, | |
| Is stouter of the two. | |
| And, though you with your utmost skill | |
| From labour could not wean them, | |
| ’Tis little, very little, all | 55 |
| That they can do between them. | |
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| Few months of life has he in store | |
| As he to you will tell, | |
| For still, the more he works, the more | |
| Do his weak ankles swell. | 60 |
| My gentle reader, I perceive | |
| How patiently you’ve waited, | |
| And now I fear that you expect | |
| Some tale will be related. | |
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| O reader! had you in your mind | 65 |
| Such stores as silent thought can bring, | |
| O gentle reader! you would find | |
| A tale in everything. | |
| What more I have to say is short, | |
| And you must kindly take it: | 70 |
| It is no tale; but, should you think, | |
| Perhaps a tale you’ll make it. | |
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| One summer-day I chanced to see | |
| This old man doing all he could | |
| To unearth the root of an old tree, | 75 |
| A stump of rotten wood. | |
| The mattock totter’d in his hand; | |
| So vain was his endeavour | |
| That at the root of the old tree | |
| He might have work’d for ever. | 80 |
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| ‘You’re overtask’d, good Simon Lee, | |
| Give me your tool,’ to him I said; | |
| And at the word right gladly he | |
| Received my proffer’d aid. | |
| I struck, and with a single blow | 85 |
| The tangled root I sever’d, | |
| At which the poor old man so long | |
| And vainly had endeavour’d. | |
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| The tears into his eyes were brought, | |
| And thanks and praises seem’d to run | 90 |
| So fast out of his heart, I thought | |
| They never would have done. | |
| —I’ve heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds | |
| With coldness still returning; | |
| Alas! the gratitude of men | 95 |
| Hath oftener left me mourning. | |
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