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The Reliquary

By Bernard and Lucy Barton. With A Prefatory Appeal for Poetry and Poets

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 II. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
[Around an oak, an ivy grew]
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


72

[Around an oak, an ivy grew]

Around an oak, an ivy grew,
With many a fond embrace:
And by its leaves of glossy hue
Made glad its dwelling-place.
Bright shone in morning's early beam
Its leafy diadem;
As bright in moonlight's silent gleam
The ivy round its stem.
But time roll'd on, and scath'd and sere
The forest-king became
Until with each revolving year
More tottering seemed his frame.
While closer still in changeless truth
Was twined the ivy braid
And for the shelter of its youth
Grace and support repaid.
Fearless it clung unto the last,
Till storms the oak o'erthrew;
When by the same relentless blast
The ivy perish'd too.