Poems (Holley)/Squire Percy's Pride

by Marietta Holley

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; The Squire owned the very floor he trod, The grass in his garden lot,The poor man had only this one little lamb Yet he envied the rich man not.

Poor was the gardener, yet rich withal In this priceless pearl of a girl,So perfect a form, so faultless a face Never brightened the halls of an Earl;Her eyes were two fathomless stars of light, And they shone on the Squire day by day,Till their warm and perilous splendor So melted his pride away,

That he fain would have taken this pretty pet lamb To dwell in his stately fold.To fetter it fast with a jeweled chain. And cage it with bars of gold;But this coy little lamb loved its freedom, Not so free was she, though, to be true,But, oh, the dainty and shy little lamb Well her master's voice she knew.

'Twas vain for the Squire the story to tell Of his riches and high descent,As it fell into one rosy shell of an ear Out of its mate it went; How one grim old ancestor into the land. With William the Conqueror came,She thought, the sweet, of a conqueror She knew with that very name.

So in this tender conflict The great man was forced to yieldTo the handsome, sunburnt ploughman Who sowed and reaped in his field;For vainly he poured out his glittering gifts, Vainly he plead and besought,Her heart was a tender and soft little heart, But it was not a heart to be bought.

So strange a thing I warrant you Happens not every day,That the pride that had thriven for centuries One slight little maiden should slay;Why the proud Squire's Roman features Quivered and burned with shame,And the picture of his grim ancestor Blushed in its antique frame.

Were this a romance, an idle tale, The Squire would sicken and die,Slain by the pitiless cruelty, Of her dark and dazzling eye; And she in some shadowy convent Would bow her beautiful head,But the hand that should have told penitent beads Wore a plain gold ring instead.

And he, not twice had his oak trees bloomed Ere he wedded a lady grand,Whose tall and towering family tree, Had for ages darkened the land;'Twas a famous genealogical tree, With no modernly thrifty shoots.But a tree with a sap of royalty Encrusting its mossy old roots.

This leaf he plucked from the outmost twig Was somewhat withered, 'tis true,Long years had flown since it lightly danced. To the summer air and the dew;Not much of a dowry brought she, In beauty or vulgar pelf,But she had two or three ancestors More than the Squire himself.

'Twas much to muse o'er their musty names, And to think that his children's brainsShould be moved by the sanguine current, That had flown through such ancient veins; But I think, sometimes, in his secret heart, The Squire breathed woful sighsFor the fresh sweet face of the little maid, With the dark and wonderful eyes.

But she, no bird ever sang such songs To its mate from contented nest,As this wee waiting wife, when the twilight Was treading the glorious west;As she looked through the clustering roses, For the manly form that would comeUp through the cool green evening fields To this sweet little wife and home.

She could see the great stone mansion Towering over the oaks' dark green,And the lawn like emerald velvet, Fit for the feet of a queen;But round this brown-eyed princess, Did Love his ermine fold,Queen was she of a richer realm, She had dearer wealth than gold.