Suddenly from a wayside station, In she comes, -- a little satchelled Country schoolgirl, Jocund as a field of cowslips. . . Looking hard, I think, How goodly Must have been the stock that bore her . . . Down the distant Georgian days and Jacobean, What a line of comely maidens, Bending to avoid the tangled Honeysuckle, Flitted from their fathers' homestead, Happy-eyed, to wander courting Through the sunset-lighted meadows: What upstanding Sons and sires, have wooed and won them . . . When she ripens, who shall wed her? Will he know, I wonder? Will he Know that, loving Her, he loves the heart of England? |