Bones!
I well remember Sir Gordon Fitch
As much for his wealth as his plain language,
A spade was a 'bloody shovel' to him,
In truth, he was an arrogant man.
The Seventh Earl in a Stately Home,
But ruined then, half falling down
Though what remained was a grand old pile
It sat in the woods by Barkly Stile.
Three living rooms and a massive hall,
And fifteen rooms if I do recall,
The house had seventeen chimneys there
Soot-caked and brooding, beyond repair.
Three of the fires were boarded in,
The rooms so cold with the house snowed in,
We shivered and sat with our coats still on,
Scarves and gloves in the morning room.
When questioned, Gordon would shrug and say,
'Don't know, old man, it was just that way!
My Gramps did anything he saw fit,
A hundred years since that fire was lit.'
'My father told me to leave it there
The chimney smoked, and it choked the air,
There was no heat from the fire when lit -
You'll just have to make the best of it! '
My bedroom, too, like an old ice chest,
I couldn't sleep, I could get no rest,
I made my way to the library
Where a fire burned, and the books were free.
Old manuscripts ran along one wall,
Family papers, brittle and old,
Some volumes of ancient erotica
Under the name 'Biologica'.
Early prints of Victorian Dames
With not a stitch, and of course, no names,
I spent too long in there, I'll avow,
Comparing the women of then, with now.
I soon got restless and turned to walls
Of papers dealing with Barkly Hall,
Dry old screeds of entail and law
Way back to the old Crimean War.
[...] Read more
poem by David Lewis Paget
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