A BALLADE OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE TOWNS
Or ever in Cheltenham town dyspeptic flaunted
His finery, or steel-clad Normans came
To build that tower at Tewkesbury bird-haunted:
Or ever rose that town of olden fame—
Ciceter, out of Roman arms and flame:
Before the older Bristol was begot
Of Keltic fathers: Caer Glow was a name.
Old Gloucester reigns the king of all the lot!
Caer Glow, “the splendid city,” so they called it,
Those funny beggars brilliant in woad;
And then the tramping Romans came and walled it
And called it Glevum, throwing many a road
Through and around it. Dane and Saxon strode
Awhile its streets; then they whose quills did blot
That Domesday Book which every city showed,
Old Gloucester reigns the king of all the lot!
Bristol, that blue-eyed sailor-man, who sallied
Forth to adventure, latterly has grown
A merchant-prince, respectable, pot-bellied.
Winchcombe—poor pagan queen—doth lack a throne.
Ciceter keeps her soul, but she alone:
For Tewkesbury’s soul is in a pewter-pot,
And Cheltenham never had one of her own.
Old Gloucester reigns the king of all the lot!
L’Envoy
Prince, you have travelled far and wide, and seen
Much nicer towns than these? “All Tommy rot!”
(“Your Royal Highness surely jests,” I mean.)
Old Gloucester reigns the king of all the lot!