Tales of a Wayside Inn

Touched by the pathos of these rhymes, / The Theologian said: "All praise / Be to the ballads of old times / And to the bards of simple ways, / Who walked with Nature hand in hand, / Whose country was their Holy Land, / Whose singing robes were homespun brown / From looms of their own native town, / Which they were not ashamed to wear, / And not of silk or sendal gay, / Nor decked with fanciful array / Of cockle-shells from Outre-Mer."

To whom the Student answered: "Yes; / All praise and honor! I confess / That bread and ale, home-baked, home-brewed, / Are wholesome and nutritious food, / But not enough for all our needs; / Poets -- the best of them -- are birds / Of passage; where their instinct leads / They range abroad for thoughts and words, / And from all climes bring home the seeds / That germinate in flowers or weeds. / They are not fowls in barnyards born / To cackle o'er a grain of corn; / And, if you shut the horizon down / To the small limits of their town, / What do you but degrade your bard / Till he at last becomes as one / Who thinks the all-encircling sun / Rises and sets in his back yard?"