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throve, as many a cultivated patch
- bore witness, bravely clad in waving gold.
- At church he kept his right hand in his pocket,-
- but sure I am at home his fingers nine
- toiled every bit as hard as others' ten.-
- One spring the torrent washed it all away.
- Their lives were spared. Ruined and stripped of all,
- he set to work to make another clearing;
- and, ere the autumn, smoke again arose
- from a new, better-sheltered, mountain farm-house.
- Sheltered? From torrent-not from avalanche;
- two years, and all beneath the snow lay buried.
- But still the avalanche could not daunt his spirit.
- He dug, and raked, and carted-cleared the ground-
- and the next winter, ere the snow-blasts came,
- a third time was his little homestead reared.
- Three sons he had, three bright and stirring boys;
- they must to school, and school was far away;-
- and they must clamber where the hill-track failed,
- by narrow ledges through the headlong scaur.
- What did he do? The eldest had to manage
- as best he might, and, where the path was worst,
- his father cast a rope round him to stay him;-
- the others on his back and arms he bore.
- Thus he toiled, year by year, till they were men.
- Now might he well have looked for some return.
- In the New World, three prosperous gentlemen
- their school-going and their father have forgotten.
- He was short-sighted. Out beyond the circle
- of those most near to him he nothing saw.