Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/222

The crowned heads of York and Lancaster.
—Gone are those days with all their deeds of arms,
Their clangor echoing loud from shore to shore,
Rousing the "shepherd-maiden" from her flocks
To buckle on strange armor and preserve
The endangered Gallic throne.
⁠With traveller's glance
We turned from Warwick's castellated dome,
Wrapped in its cloud of rich remembrances,
And took our pilgrim way. There many a trait
Of rural life we gathered up, to fill
The outline of our picture, shaded strong
By the dark pencil of old feudal times.

We saw a rustic household wandering forth
That cloudless afternoon, perchance to make
Some visit promised long, for each was clad
With special care, as on a holiday.
The father bore the baby awkwardly
In his coarse arms, like tool or burden used
About his work, yet kindly bent him down
To hear its little murmur of delight.
With a more practised hand the mother led
One who could scarcely totter, its small feet
Patting unequally,—from side to side
Its rotund body balancing. Alone,
Majestic in an added year, walked on
Between the groups another ruddy one.
She faltereth at the stile, but being raised
And set upon the green sward, how she shouts,