Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1873-10-10
Poetyy.
From the Independent.
THE OLD P.aRSO.v.
J. t. TRowDRIDGE,

]. t. TRowDRIDGE.
In antiquc-fashione coat and wig, A
Along the road the aged preacher
Goes slowly jogging in his gig,
home spun saint in garb and feature
He has q smile or kindly speech
Alike for rich and poor and each
Wild youth no sermon yet could reach:
"For all are better than their deeds,
And Heaven is kinder than our croeds,,
Thinks the old Parson.
Not now the schoolboys, hat in hand,
And pinafored and pretty lasses,
In rows upon the roadside stand
And make their manners when he passes,
As the good custom used to be
In days when he was young; but he
Likes better, simple soul, to see
Tho smile that lights each roguish eye
And rosy face as he rides by,
The dear old Parson.
Though many stop he males you'll find
His welcome presence longest fingers
In yonder cottage-room behind
The honeysuckes and syringas,
where all the lovely summer lies
The crippled girl, with yearning eyes
Few come to sooth her loneliness,
And so good cause has she to bless
The Kind old Parson.
When friends fall out before the gate
The gig turns up, he bitches sorrel-
Love enters in the house of Hate.
He takes the hands of them that quarrel
And says: "Forgivel forgive! and then,
If need there be. forgive again,
And still forgive and Lowell For men
Are always better than their Deeds"
Such seeds he sows. Heaven bless the seeds
sown by the Parsonl
His mission is to help and bless;
And the har 4 doctrines that he breaches
In words Of Joy and gentleness
Arc hidden, like the stones in peaches.
His hearers hearts are warned and stirred;
"And yet he does not preach the wordl
His works are vain !" as late heard,
With lnger-shake and sapient air,
Two pert young ministers declare,
And blame the Parson.
One said, ''He likes a hand at whist";
And one, ''he takes glass at dinner,
And loves to counsel and assist
"Grave faults !" said both But this know:
The Parsons life, as Parsons go,
Is such that those who judge him so
Are hardly worthy to unloose
The buckles OF his dusty shoes
rare old Parson.
"He likes Joke too well by half;
And so he sets some hearts a-quaking,
As II, because his deacons laugh,
The pillars of the church were shaking!
81 never yet could learn, he says,
"why rooted faith should flourish less
In broad, sunshiny cheerfulness
Than in the shadow Of the tomb:
'Tis fear, not faith, that hugs the gloom"
Argues the Parson.
He squares his thought by right good sense,
And does not dread the light Of science.
His finest flowers Of eloquence
Are just the common dandelions
And buttercups Of daily speech;
And yet they say who hear him preach
That none 30 we'll as he can teach
The hope that lives, the love that burns,
Till even the careless skeptic turns
To heed the Parson.
But though he be not deeply versed
In modern oratoric graces,
The studied pause, the fervent burst,
The hower-embroidered commonplaces,
He treads no changeless, narrow rounds
OF old belief, but far from bounds
His new Jerusalem he founds;
"For newer life brings larger needs
And truth outgrows our threadbare crecds,"
Says the wise Parson.
Loves labors are his rest, and still
His friends will look in pleasant weather,
To see him jogging by, until
His gig and he break down together.
Our friend is growing very old,
And rich in all the boarded gold
Which hearts alone can have and hold;
''The riches that men leave behind
Are not the riches to my mind"
Quoth the old Parson.
He still will have the good he gave
When all his earthly errands ended,
He who has stood by many grave
Shall be by us in turn attended
To the last resting-place Of clay;
Then, as we lay his form away,
We'l strew the sod with flowers, and say:
"The man was better than his deeds,
His heart was larger than our creeds,
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