Classic Poem

‘If I am gone on, you will find a small string’—
Were her words—‘on this twig of the oak by the spring.’
Oh! gay are the new-leavèd trees in the spring,
Down under the height where the skylark may sing,
And welcome in summer are tree-leaves that meet
On wide-spreading limbs, for a screen from the heat;
And fair in the fall-tide may flutter the few
Yellow leaves of the trees that the sky may shine through:
But welcomer far than the leaves is the string
On the twig of the oak by the spring.