The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp with “Nell” on English meadows
Wandered, and lost their way.
And so, in mountain solitudes, o’ertaken
As by some spell divine—
Their cares drop from them, like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.
Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire;—
And he who wrought that spell?
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vines’ incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.
And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,
This spray of Western pine!
—Francis Bret Harte.
HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR
Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swoon’d, nor utter’d cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
“She must weep or she will die.”
Then they praised him, soft and low,
Call’d him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.
Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stept,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.
Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee—
Like summer tempest came her tears—
“Sweet my child, I live for thee.”
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson.