[from Collected Works, T.E.Brown]

THIRD SERIES

PRELUDE

FIRST comes Tom Baynes among these sorted quills,
In asynartete octosyllables.
Methinks you see the " fo’c’s’le " squat, the squirt
Nicotian, various interval of shirt,
Enlarged, contract—keen swordsman, cut-and-thrust:
Old salt, old rip, old friend, Tom Baynes comes fust.

Succeeds our Curate, innocent and good,
The growth of Oxford in her sanest mood;
Dame Nature’s child, though bred among the Stoics,
And, if he gush, he gushes in heroics.
Forgive the youth if sometimes he relax
In extra gush of pseudo-dochmiacs.

Last hear our Pazon, reverend and meek;
In unadorned verse I make him speak,
As is most fit. To him Tom Baynes’ rude style
Were " simply barbarous "—I see him smile
His smile—" Poor Tom has thoughts beyond his station,
But language ! sir—unfit for publication."
The Curate’s rhymes he haply thinks audacious,
Emphatic, overwrought. " But ‘twere ungracious
Of me to criticise a gentleman
That is so kind and clever." There again
You have our Pazon. So he says his say,
And all my dreams of Manxland fade away.

1889.