Ned Bratts by Robert Browning — Read

'T was Bedford Special Assize, one daft Midsummer's Day: / A broiling blasting June, -- was never its like, men say. / Corn stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked yellow as that; / Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming around each flat. / Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept bibbing beer, / While the parsons prayed for rain. 'T was horrible, yes -- but queer: / Queer -- for the sun laughed gay, yet nobody moved a hand / To work one stroke at his trade: as given to understand / That all was come to a stop, work and such worldly ways, / And the world's old self about to end in a merry blaze, / Midsummer's day moreover was the first of Bedford Fair; / With Bedford Town's tag-rag and bobtail a-bowsing there.

But the Court House, Quality crammed: through doors ope, windows / wide, / High on the Bench you saw sit Lordships side by side. / There frowned Chief Justice Jukes, fumed learned Brother Small, / And fretted their fellow Judge: like threshers, one and all, / Of a reek with laying down the law in a furnace. Why? / Because their lungs breathed flame -- the regular crowd forbye -- / From gentry pouring in -- quite a nosegay, to be sure! / How else could they pass the time, six mortal hours endure / Till night should extinguish day, when matters might haply mend? / Meanwhile no bad resource was -- watching begin and end / Some trial for life and death, in a brisk five minutes' space, / And betting which knave would 'scape, which hang, from his sort of / face.