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Squire Percy's Pride.

by Marietta Holley

The Squire was none of your common men

Whose ancestors nobody knows,

But visible was his lineage

In the lines of his Roman nose,

That turned in the true patrician curve -

In the curl of his princely lips,

In his slightly insolent eyelids,

In his pointed finger-tips.

Very erect and grand looked the Squire

As he walked o'er his broad estate,

For he felt that the earth was honored

In bearing his honorable weight;

Proudly he strolled through his wooded park

Deer-haunted and gloomily grand,

Or gazed from his pillared porticoes

On his far-outlying land.

In a tiny whitewashed cottage,

Half-covered with roses wild,

His cheerful-faced old gardener dwelt

Alone with his motherless child;

The Squire owned the very floor he trod,

The grass in his garden lot,

The poor man had only this one little lamb

Yet he envied the rich man not.

Poor was the gardener, yet rich withal

In this priceless pearl of a girl,

So perfect a form, so faultless a face

Never brightened the halls of an Earl;

Her eyes were two fathomless stars of light,

And they shone on the Squire day by day,

Till their warm and perilous splendor

So melted his pride away,

That he fain would have taken this pretty pet lamb

To dwell in his stately fold,

To fetter it fast with a jeweled chain,

And cage it with bars of gold;

But this coy little lamb loved its freedom,

Not so free was she, though, to be true,

But, oh, the dainty and shy little lamb

Well her master's voice she knew.

'Twas vain for the Squire the story to tell

Of his riches and high descent,

As it fell into one rosy shell of an ear

Out of its mate it went;

How one grim old ancestor into the land

With William the Conqueror came,

She thought, the sweet, of a conqueror

She knew with that very name.

So in this tender conflict

The great man was forced to yield

To the handsome, sunburnt ploughman

Who sowed and reaped in his field;

For vainly he poured out his glittering gifts,

Vainly he plead and besought,

Her heart was a tender and soft little heart,

But it was not a heart to be bought.

So strange a thing I warrant you

Happens not every day,

That the pride that had thriven for centuries

One slight little maiden should slay;

Why the proud Squire's Roman features

Quivered and burned with shame,

And the picture of his grim ancestor

Blushed in its antique frame.

Were this a romance, an idle tale,

The Squire would sicken and die,

Slain by the pitiless cruelty,

Of her dark and dazzling eye;

And she in some shadowy convent

Would bow her beautiful head,

But the hand that should have told penitent beads

Wore a plain gold ring instead.

And he, not twice had his oak trees bloomed

Ere he wedded a lady grand,

Whose tall and towering family tree,

Had for ages darkened the land;

'Twas a famous genealogical tree,

With no modernly thrifty shoots,

But a tree with a sap of royalty

Encrusting its mossy old roots.

This leaf he plucked from the outmost twig

Was somewhat withered, 'tis true,

Long years had flown since it lightly danced

To the summer air and the dew;

Not much of a dowry brought she,

In beauty or vulgar pelf,

But she had two or three ancestors

More than the Squire himself.

'Twas much to muse o'er their musty names,

And to think that his children's brains

Should be moved by the sanguine current,

That had flown through such ancient veins;

But I think, sometimes, in his secret heart,

The Squire breathed woeful sighs

For the fresh sweet face of the little maid,

With the dark and wonderful eyes.

But she, no bird ever sang such songs

To its mate from contented nest,

As this wee waiting wife, when the twilight

Was treading the glorious west;

As she looked through the clustering roses,

For the manly form that would come

Up through the cool green evening fields

To this sweet little wife and home.

She could see the great stone mansion

Towering over the oaks' dark green,

And the lawn like emerald velvet,

Fit for the feet of a queen;

But round this brown-eyed princess,

Did Love his ermine fold,

Queen was she of a richer realm,

She had dearer wealth than gold.