Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

The City Clerk

Thomas Ashe (1836–1889)

’TIS strange how my head runs on! ’tis a puzzle to understand

Such fancies stirring in me, for a whiff of hay in the Strand!

I see the old farmhouse, and garden wall, and the bees;

I see the mowers stretch’d, with their bottles, under the trees;

I hear the little brook a-ripple down in the dell;

I hear the old-folk croon—‘Our son, he is doing well!’

O yes, I am doing well; but I’d be again, for a day,

A simple farmer’s lad, among the girls in the hay.