Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/79

 WINTER'S FETE.

��I WOKE, and every lordling of the grove

Was clad in diamonds, and the lowliest shrub

Did wear its crest of brilliants gallantly.

The swelling hillocks, with their woven vines,

The far-seen forests, and the broken hedge,

Yea, every thicket gleam 'd in bright array,

As for some gorgeous fete of fairy land.

Ho ! jewel-keeper of the hoary north,

Whence hast thou all these treasures ? Why, the mines

Of rich Golconda, since the world was young,

Would fail to furnish such a glorious show.

The queen, who to her coronation comes,

With half a realm's exchequer on her head,

Dazzleth the shouting crowd. But all the queens

Who since old Egypt's buried dynasty

Have here and there, amid the mists of time,

Lifted their tiny sceptres, all the throng

Of peeresses, who at some birth-night shine,

Might boast no moiety of the gems thy hand

So lavishly hath strewn o'er this old tree,

Fast by my window.

Every noteless thorn, Even the coarse sumach, and the bramble bush,

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