The morning ride, the noonday halt,
The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
And then--the dim, brown, columned vault,
With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.

Once more I see the rocking masts
That scrape the sky, their only tenant
The jay-bird that in frolic casts
From some high yard his broad blue pennant.
I see the Indian files that keep
Their places in the dusty heather,
Their red trunks standing ankle deep
In moccasins of rusty leather.

I see all this, and marvel much
That thou, sweet woodland waif, art able
To keep the company of such
As throng thy friend's--the poet's--table:
The latest spawn the press hath cast,--
The "modern Pope's," "the later Byron's,"--
Why e'en the best may not outlast
Thy poor relation,--_Sempervirens_.

Thy sire saw the light that shone
On Mohammed's uplifted crescent,
On many a royal gilded throne
And deed forgotten in the present;
He saw the age of sacred trees
And Druid groves and mystic larches;
And saw from forest domes like these