There was a time in former years—

   While my roof-tree was his—

When I should have been distressed by fears

   At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously,

   “The pricking rain strikes cold;

His road is bare of hedge or tree,

   And he is getting old.”

But now the fitful chimney-roar,

   The drone of Thorncombe trees,

The Froom in flood upon the moor,

   The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty wick’d,

   The thuds upon the thatch,

The eaves-drops on the window flicked,

   The clacking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers,

   I scarcely heed or mind;

He has won that storm-tight roof of hers

   Which Earth grants all her kind.