Читать книгу Home And Camp - William Dean - Страница 6

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Her father was leaving the station,

Through some little thing he had done;

And turned from a brief altercation,

To bid us good-bye on the run.

With frost laying white on the fences,

And ice an inch thick on the dam,

That morning to cut down expenses,

He told Nell to part with her lamb.

“We travel by train—cannot truck it,”

And oh! how the little one cried,

How often it drank from her bucket—

’Twas her’s when the mother had died.

I stood with my mate, Jack Mc’Kibbou,

The Sunday before and watched Nell,

Who playfully decked it with ribbon,

Adorning it’s neck with a bell.

She fed it the last time, and weeping,

She said with her hand on the gate:

“The lamb, Tom—I’ll leave in your keeping,

I’ll leave it to you and your mate.”

And Nellie has gone, and when older,

When clover and grass spring again,

I fear that the lamb, growing bolder,

Will join the big flock on the plain.

I trust, when from creek side and clearing

We muster for those in their “stands,”

That one of the flock at the shearing

Won’t pass to a rough shearer’s hands

To cut and to mangle to pieces

And after for others to cram

Unknown with the other small fleeces,

The fleece of that little girl’s lamb.