Page:The Forest Sanctuary.pdf/92

We have been wanderers since those days of woe,
Thy boy and I!—As wild birds tend their young,
So have I tended him—my bounding roe!
The high Peruvian solitudes among;
And o'er the Andes-torrents borne his form,
Where our frail bridge hath quiver'd midst the storm^20[1].
—But there the war-notes of my country rung,
And, smitten deep of Heaven and man, I fled

But be went on in gladness—that fair child!
Save when at times his bright eye seem'd to dream,
And his young lips, which then no longer smil'd,
Ask'd of his mother!—that was but a gleam
Of Memory, fleeting fast; and then his play
Through the wide Llanos^21[2] cheer'd again our way,
And by the mighty Oronoco stream,
On whose lone margin we have heard at morn,