TOM, if they loved thee best who called thee Tom. <br />What else may all men call thee, seeing thus bright <br />Even yet the laughing and the weeping light <br />That still thy kind old eyes are kindled from? <br />Small care was thine to assail and overcome <br />Time and his child Oblivion: yet of right <br />Thy name has part with names of lordlier might <br />For English love and homely sense of home, <br />Whose fragrance keeps thy small sweet bayleaf young <br />And gives it place aloft among thy peers <br />Whence many a wreath once higher strong Time has hurled: <br />And this thy praise is sweet on Shakespeare’s tongue— <br />‘O good old man, how well in thee appears <br />The constant service of the antique world!’<br /><br />Algernon Charles Swinburne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thomas-heywood-x/
