The thin hairs, white with seventy winters’ snow,
Look patriarchal. Waldegrave ’twere in vain
To point out here, unless in yon scare-crow,
That stands full-uniformed upon the plain,
To frighten flocks of crows and blackbirds from the grain.
VI.
For he would look particularly droll
In his “Iberian boot” and “Spanish plume,”
And be the wonder of each Christian soul
As of the birds that scare-crow and his broom.
But Gertrude, in her loveliness and bloom,
Hath many a model here; for woman’s eye,
In court or cottage, wheresoe’er her home,
Hath a heart-spell too holy and too high
To be o’erpraised even by her worshipper—Poesy.
VII.
There’s one in the next field—of sweet sixteen—
Singing and summoning thoughts of beauty born
In heaven—with her jacket of light green,
“Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,”
Without a shoe or stocking—hoeing corn.
Whether, like Gertrude, she oft wanders there,
With Shakespeare’s volume in her bosom borne,
I think is doubtful. Of the poet-player
The maiden knows no more than Cobbett or Voltaire.
