It's a quaint old ramshackle moss-grown place,
Keeping its staid accustomed pace;
Not moved at all by the rush and flurry,
The mad tempestuous windy hurry
Of the big world tossing in rage and riot,
While the village holds to its old-world quiet.
There's a family grocer, a family baker,
A family butcher and sausage-maker--
A butcher, proud of his craft and willing
To admit that his business in life is killing,
Who parades a heart as soft as his meat's tough--
There's a little shop for the sale of sweet stuff;
There's a maker and mender of boots and shoes
Of the sort that the country people use,
Studded with iron and clamped with steel,
And stout as a ship from toe to heel,
Who announces himself above his entry
As "patronised by the leading gentry."
There's an inn, "The George";
There's a blacksmith's forge,
And in the neat little inn's trim garden
The old men, each with his own churchwarden,
Bent and grey, but gossipy fellows,
Sip their innocent pints of beer,
While the anvil-notes ring high and clear
To the rushing bass of the mighty bellows.
And thence they look on a cheerful scene
As the little ones play on the Village Green,
Skipping about
With laugh and shout
As if no Darville could ever squire them,
And nothing on earth could tame or tire them.
On the central point of the pleasant Green
The famous stone-walled well is seen
Which has never stinted its ice-cold waters
To generations of Cragwell's daughters.
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