Verses Found In A Summerhouse At Hales-Owen

When Dryden’s fool, ‘unknowing what he sought,’ His hours in whistling spent, ‘for want of thought,’ This guiltless oaf his vacancy of sense Supplied, and amply too, by innocence Did modern swains, possess’d of Cymon’s powers, In Cymon’s manner waste their leisure hours, Th’ offended guests would not, with blushing, see These fair green walks disgraced by infamy. Severe the fate of modern fools, alas! When vice and folly mark them as they pass. Like noxious reptiles o’er the whiten’d wall, The filth they leave still points out where they crawl.