148
THE GUERILLA CHIEF.
They parted.
Leandro kept that little cross like life:
And when beneath the sky of Mexico,—
When earth and even Heaven were strange to him,—
The trees, the flowers, were of another growth;
The birds wore other plumes; the very stars
Were not those he had looked upon in boyhood.
'Tis something, if in absence we can see
The footsteps of the past:—it soothes the heart
To breathe the air scented in other years
By lips beloved; to wander through the groves
Where once we were not lonely,—where the rose
Reminds us of the hair we used to wreathe
With its fresh buds—where every hill and vale,
