Page:Traits and Trials.pdf/153



spoke the aged wanderer, A kind old man was he, Smoothing the fair child's golden hair Who sat upon his knee:—

"'Tis now some fifteen years, or more,    Since to your town I came; And, though a stranger, made my home 	    Where no one knew my name.

"I did not seek your pleasant woods,    Where the green linnets sing— Nor yet your meadows, for the sake     Of any living thing.

"For fairer is the little town,    And brighter is the tide, And pleasanter the woods that hang     My native river's side.

"Or such, at least, they seemed to me—    I spent my boyhood there; And memory, in looking back,     Makes every thing more fair.

"But half a century has past    Since last I saw their face; God hath appointed me, at length,     Another resting-place.