| 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 must 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 family. |
| 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. |
