Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch

little village tucked into a fold
(A sort of valley, not over wide)
Of the hills that flank it on either side.
There's a large grey church with a square stone tower,
And a clock to mark you the passing hour
In a chime that shivers the village calm
With a few odd bits of the 100th psalm.
A red-brick Vicarage stands thereby,
Breathing comfort and lapped in ease,
With a row of elms thick-trunked and high,
And a bevy of rooks to caw in these.

'Tis there that the Revd. Salvyn Bent
(No tie could be neater or whiter than his tie)
Maintains the struggle against dissent,
An Oxford scholar ex Aede Christi;
And there in his twenty-minute sermons
He makes mince-meat of the modern Germans,
Defying their apparatus criticus

Like a brave old Vicar,
A famous sticker
To Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus.
He enjoys himself like a hearty boy
Who finds his life for his needs the aptest;
But the poi