Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/214

Were his two gentle sisters. One, a girl
Of some eight summers, youngest and most loved
For her prolonged and feeble infancy.
She leaned upon her mother's lap, and looked
Into her face, with an intense regard,
And that quick, intermitting sob that tells
How the soul's listening may impede the flow
Of respiration. Pale she was, and fair,
And so exceeding fragile, that the name
Given by her stronger playmates, at their sports,
Of "Lily of the Vale," seemed well bestowed.
The mother told them of her native clime,
Her own, beloved New England, of the school,
Where many children o'er their lessons bent,
Each mindful of the rules, to read, or spell,
Or ply the needle, at the appointed hour,
And how they serious sate, with folded hands,
When the good mistress through her spectacles
Read from the Bible.
                               Of the church she spake,
With slender spire, o'er-canopied by elms,
And how the sweet bell on the sabbath-morn,
Did call from every home, the people forth,
All neatly clad, and with a reverent air,
Children, by parents led, to worship God.
Absorbed in such recital, ever mixed
By that maternal lip, with precepts pure,
Of love to God and man, they scarcely marked
A darkening shadow, o'er the casement steal,