IN MEMORY OF ALFRED POLLEXFEN
 
 FIVE-AND-TWENTY years have gone
 Since old William pollexfen
 Laid his strong bones down in death
 By his wife Elizabeth
 In the grey stone tomb he made.
 And after twenty years they laid
 In that tomb by him and her
 His son George, the astrologer;
 And Masons drove from miles away
 To scatter the Acacia spray
 Upon a melancholy man
 Who had ended where his breath began.
 Many a son and daughter lies
 Far from the customary skies,
 The Mall and Eades's grammar school,
 In London or in Liverpool;
 But where is laid the sailor John
 That so many lands had known,
 Quiet lands or unquiet seas
 Where the Indians trade or Japanese?
 He never found his rest ashore,
 Moping for one voyage more.
 Where have they laid the sailor John?
 And yesterday the youngest son,
 A humorous, unambitious man,
 Was buried near the astrologer,
 Yesterday in the tenth year
 Since he who had been contented long.
 A nobody in a great throng,
 Decided he would journey home,
 Now that his fiftieth year had come,
 And "Mr.  Alfred' be again
 Upon the lips of common men
 Who carried in their memory
 His childhood and his family.
 At all these death-beds women heard
 A visionary white sea-bird
 Lamenting that a man should die;
 And with that cry I have raised my cry.