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32 :The thin hairs, white with seventy winters’ snow,
 * Look patriarchal. Waldegrave ’twere in vain
 * To point out here, unless in yon scare-crow,
 * That stands full-uniformed upon the plain,

To frighten flocks of crows and blackbirds from the grain.


 * In his “Iberian boot” and “Spanish plume,”
 * And be the wonder of each Christian soul
 * As of the birds that scare-crow and his broom.
 * But Gertrude, in her loveliness and bloom,
 * Hath many a model here; for woman’s eye,
 * In court or cottage, wheresoe’er her home,
 * Hath a heart-spell too holy and too high

To be o’erpraised even by her worshipper—Poesy.


 * Singing and summoning thoughts of beauty born
 * In heaven—with her jacket of light green,
 * “Love-darting eyes, and tresses like the morn,”
 * Without a shoe or stocking—hoeing corn.
 * Whether, like Gertrude, she oft wanders there,
 * With Shakespeare’s volume in her bosom borne,
 * I think is doubtful. Of the poet-player

The maiden knows no more than Cobbett or Voltaire.