Knights and Ladies

There is in my old picture-book

A page at which I like to look,

Where knights and squires come riding down

The cobbles of some steep old town,

And ladies from beneath the eaves

Flutter their bravest handkerchiefs,

Or, smiling proudly, toss down gages . . .

But that was in the Middle Ages.

It wouldn't happen now; but still,

Whenever I look up the hill

Where, dark against the green and blue,

The firs come marching, two by two,

I wonder if perhaps I might

See suddenly a shining knight

Winding his way from blue to green—

Exactly as it would have been

Those many, many years ago. . . .