“What! is the ancient shepherd dead?
The Patriarch of the Mountains gone?
And is all his white hair withered,
That once like snow in the moonlight shone?
And is yon old dame left alone
To battle with the world? ‘Alas!
How different from the thing she was!
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“He was no common hind, who held
An idle occupation here;
Nor in fantastic dreams beheld
Wild visions from another sphere;
But his mind was firm and clear,
And many useful things could tell,
And, at times, on loftier story dwell.
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“Every bird that wandereth forth,
And every grass and herb that sips
Nourishment from the rainy North
He knew, aye, and the dark eclipse,
The moon, the sun, and why he dips
His head beneath the burning seas,
And nature’s many mysteries.
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“Oh, he was well-beloved there!
The very breezes seem’d to play,
In fondness, with his silver hair;
But now he’s vanish’d from the day,
And shook his eighty years away.
Free as his mountain winds is he,
Let loose to immortality.”
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