Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/75

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HEADLONG HALL.
67
Through all our land we could not boast
A knight more gay, more prompt than he,
To rise and fill a bumper toast,
And pass it round with three times three.

None better knew the feast to sway,
Or keep Mirth's boat in better trim;
For Nature had but little clay
Like that of which she moulded him.
The meanest guest that graced his board,
Was there the freest of the free,
His bumper toast when Peter poured,
And passed it round with three times three.

He kept at true good humour's mark,
The social flow of pleasure's tide:
He never made a brow look dark,
Nor caused a tear, but when he died.