Thomas Prince, who was several times the governor of the Plymouth colony, was the leader of the settlement of Eastham. There was recently standing, on what was once his farm, in this town, a pear-tree which is said to have been brought from England, and planted there by him, about two hundred years ago. It was blown down a few months before we were there. A late account says that it was recently in a vigorous state; the fruit small, but excellent; and it yielded on an average fifteen bushels. Some appropriate lines have been addressed to it, by a Mr. Heman Doane, from which I will quote, partly because they are the only specimen of Cape Cod verse which I remember to have seen, and partly because they are not bad.
"Two hundred years have, on the wings of Time,
Passed with their joys and woes, since thou, Old Tree!
Put forth thy first leaves in this foreign clime,
Transplanted from the soil beyond the sea.
*****
[These stars represent the more clerical lines, and also those which have deceased.]
"That exiled band long since have passed away,
And still, Old Tree! thou standest in the place
Where Prince's hand did plant thee in his day,—
An undesigned memorial of his race
And time; of those our honored fathers, when
They came from Plymouth o'er and settled here;
Doane, Higgins, Snow, and other worthy men,
Whose names their sons remember to revere.
*****
"Old Time has thinned thy boughs, Old Pilgrim Tree!
And bowed thee with the weight of many years;
Yet, 'mid the frosts of age, thy bloom we see,
And yearly still thy mellow fruit appears."
There are some other lines which I might quote, if
