Jump to content

Page:Poems Holley.djvu/153

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
SQUIRE PERCY'S PRIDE.
The Squire was none of your common men
Whose ancestors nobody knows,
But visible was his lineage
In the lines of his Roman nose,
That turned in the true patrician curve—
In the curl of his princely lips,
In his slightly insolent eyelids,
In his pointed finger-tips.

Very erect and grand looked the Squire
As he walked o'er his broad estate,
For he felt that the earth was honored
In bearing his honorable weight;
Proudly he strolled through his wooded park
Deer-haunted and gloomily grand,
Or gazed from his pillared porticoes.
On his far-outlying land.

In a tiny whitewashed cottage,
Half-covered with roses wild,
His cheerful-faced old gardener dwelt
Alone with his motherless child;