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.

ROSES OF JUNE.

She sat in the cottage door, and the fair June moon looked down
  On a face as pure as its own, an innocent face and sweet
  As the roses dewy white that grow so thick at her feet,
White royal roses, fit for a monarch’s crown.

And one is clasped in her slender hand, and one on her bosom lies,
  And two rare blushing buds loop up her light brown hair,
  Ah, roses of June, you never looked on a face so white and fair,
Such perfectly moulded lips, such sweet and heavenly eyes.