For all you know he may be the descendant of some impecunious sire of a lordly house.

Since when the world began to be, And life through hidden purpose came, From sire to son unceasingly The task bequeathed hath been the same.

Thus I'm an image of that Sire in whom All beings are, like fishes in the sea; That one true object of the loving mind.

But while the seamen crouched to sleep, Conn sat alone in reverie deep, And saw before him in a maze The mute procession of his days, In gloom and glamour wending fast His heart a-hungering for the past Again he leapt, a tender boy, To greet his sire with eager joy, When he came over the wide North Sea, Enriched with spoils of victory Then heavily loomed that fateful morn When tidings of his fall were borne From Alban shore ...

Well, luck be with the gipsy man and lead him safely home To the old familiar caravan and ways he used to roam, And bring him as it brought his sires from their far first abode To where the gipsy camp-fires burn along the Portsmouth Road.

Oh! justly burn'd my father's cheek, I ween, "His sires by honest toil the dwelling got; Their home was not for sale."

Mercury killed his false sire for this act, His damme a beast was pardoned, beastly fact.

And such a nook of blessedness, they say, Your Sire at length has found; while you, best Child, Content in his contentment, acquiesce In patient toils; and in a station less, Than you might image, when your prospects smiled.

'Tis one of the parliament's bye-blows, acts only being legitimate, and hath no more sire than a Spanish jennet that is begotten by the wind.

Lady, thy loveliness hath walked my brain, As if I were thy heritage in sooth, Bequeathed from sires beyond all story's reach.

I could a tale of harrowing woes reveal, Whilst York and Lancaster for mastery tried: When men the ties of nature ceased to feel, When sires beneath their offsprings' sabres died; And sires 'gainst children clad themselves in arms, And England mourned the din of war's alarms.