On Hounslow Heath — and close beside the road,

As western travellers may oft have seen —

A little house some years ago there stood,

A minikin abode;

And built like Mr. Birkbeck’s, all of wood:

The walls of white, the window-shutters green —

Four wheels it had at North, South, East, and West

(Though now at rest),

On which it used to wander to and fro,

Because its master ne’er maintained a rider,

Like those who trade in Paternoster Row;

But made his business travel for itself,

Till he had made his pelf,

And then retired — if one may call it so,

Of a roadsider.

Perchance, the very race and constant riot

Of stages, long and short, which thereby ran,

Made him more relish the repose and quiet

Of his now sedentary caravan;

Perchance, he loved the ground because ’twas common,

And so he might impale a strip of soil

That furnished, by his toil,

Some dusty greens, for him and his old woman; —

And five tall hollyhocks, in dingy flower:

Howbeit, the thoroughfare did no ways spoil

His peace — unless, in some unlucky hour,

A stray horse came, and gobbled up his bow’r!

But, tired of always looking at the coaches,

The same to come — when they had seen them one day!

And, used to brisker life, both man and wife

Began to suffer N U E’s approaches,

And feel retirement like a long wet Sunday —

So, having had some quarters of school breeding,

They turned themselves, like other folks, to reading;

But setting out where others nigh have done,

And being ripened in the seventh stage,

The childhood of old age,

Began, as other children have begun —

Not with the pastorals of Mr. Pope,

Or Bard of Hope,

Or Paley ethical, or learned Porson —

But spelt, on Sabbaths, in St. Mark, or John,

And then relax’d themselves with Whittington,

Or Valentine and Orson —

But chiefly fairy tales they loved to con,

And being easily melted in their dotage,

Slobber’d — and kept

Reading — and wept

Over the White Cat, in their wooden cottage.

Thus reading on — the longer

They read, of course, their childish faith grew stronger

In Gnomes, and Hags, and Elves, and Giants grim —

If talking Trees and Birds revealed to him,

She saw the flight of Fairyland’s fly-wagons,

And magic fishes swim

In puddle ponds, and took old crows for dragons —

Both were quite drunk from the enchanted flagons;

When as it fell upon a summer’s day,

As the old man sat a feeding

On the old babe-reading,

Beside his open street-and parlor door,

A hideous roar

Proclaimed a drove of ............