She thought of that quiet convent’s calm, its sunshine and its flowers?
The scene was changed. It was a bark that slowly held its way,
And o’er its lee[184] the coast of France in the light of evening lay;
And on its deck a lady sat, who gazed with tearful eyes
Upon the fast-receding hills,[185] that dim and distant rise.
No marvel that the lady wept—there was no land on earth[186]
She loved like that dear land, although she owed it not her birth;
It was her mother’s land, the land of childhood and of friends—
It was the land where she had found for all her griefs amends—
The land where her dead husband slept—the land where she had known