Page:Poems Holley.djvu/156

And she in some shadowy convent
 Would bow her beautiful head,
But the hand that should have told penitent beads
 Wore a plain gold ring instead.

And he, not twice had his oak trees bloomed
 Ere he wedded a lady grand,
Whose tall and towering family tree,
 Had for ages darkened the land;
'Twas a famous genealogical tree,
 With no modernly thrifty shoots.
But a tree with a sap of royalty
 Encrusting its mossy old roots.

This leaf he plucked from the outmost twig
 Was somewhat withered, 'tis true,
Long years had flown since it lightly danced.
 To the summer air and the dew;
Not much of a dowry brought she,
 In beauty or vulgar pelf,
But she had two or three ancestors
 More than the Squire himself.

'Twas much to muse o'er their musty names,
 And to think that his children's brains
Should be moved by the sanguine current,
 That had flown through such ancient veins;