Page:Poems Terry, 1861.djvu/152

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IN THE HOSPITAL.
How the wind yells on the Gulf and prairie!
How it rattles in the windows wide!
And the rats squeak like our old ship's rigging:
I shall die with the turn of tide.

I've had a rough life on the ocean,
And a tough life on the land;
Now I'm like a broken hulk in the dock-yard,—
I can't stir foot nor hand.

There are green trees in the Salem graveyard;
By the meeting-house steps they grow.;
And there they put my poor old mother,
The third in the leeward row.

There's the low red house on the corner,
With a slant roof and a well-sweep behind,
And yellow-headed fennel in the garden,—
How I see it when I go blind!