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Reuben and Other Poems

by Robert Leighton

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Outside our village, up within a croft,
Shelter'd from all the winds except the soft
Sweet clover breath that comes out of the west,
There lived a widow in a lonely nest—
A clay-built cottage in against a bank,
Choked up with brambles, docks and nettles rank;
Before the door a small potato bed,
A bush or two of roses, white and red,
Some herbs we used to know in days of old,
As rue, and thyme, and balm and marigold;
And one tall willow, in whose wiry top
A pair of pyets came to jibe and hop:
A sleepy place but for the little stream
That brattled through the croft and broke its dream.