My infant breath, and into manhood grew.
Its fields are overgrown with willows now,
For more than forty years unturned by plough,
While war's red desolation razed to earth
The old stone manor-house that claimed my birth.
Ah, yes! 'Tis forty years ago, or more,
Since, standing near the old paternal door,
One pleasant morning in the early spring,
With some few friends and kinfolks visiting,
Two mounted neighbors stopped in passing by,