THERE was a time in former years—

While my roof-tree was his— When I should have been distressed by fears At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously, “The pricking rain strikes cold; His road is bare of hedge or tree, And he is getting old.”

But now the fitful chimney-roar, The drone of Thorncombe trees, The Froom in flood upon the moor, The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty wick’d, The thuds upon the thatch, The eaves-drops on the window flicked, The clacking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers, I scarcely heed or mind; He has won that storm-tight roof of hers Which Earth grants all her kind.