University of Virginia Library

III

Then I think, not of myself—but an image comes to me of one who has past,

Of an old man bent with labor;

He, like his father before him, for many and many a year,

When the cows down the mountains have trudged in the summer evening, and after the evening milking,

Night after night, and year after year, back up the lane he has driven them, while the shepherd-dog leaped and barked—

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Back up the lane, and past the orchard, and through the bars

Into the night pasture.