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148

They parted. kept that little cross like life: And when beneath the sky of Mexico,— When earth and even Heaven were strange to him,— The trees, the flowers, were of another growth; The birds wore other plumes; the very stars Were not those he had looked upon in boyhood.

'Tis something, if in absence we can see The footsteps of the past:—it soothes the heart To breathe the air scented in other years By lips beloved; to wander through the groves Where once we were not lonely,—where the rose Reminds us of the hair we used to wreathe With its fresh buds—where every hill and vale,