The mandate came.⁠— Marco must go. What! leave the dear ones all Alone. The gray-haired sire sunning himself Without the cottage door? The little wife in Blooming womanhood? The cherub who in Human form had come to bless his home? Must he leave his treasures and away to Distant shores, perchance, lay clown to die? O! the thought was death itself. Yet go he Must. Each day he’d wander through the glade, Where every blade and tuft of grass was dear, So dear. All his life from babe to manhood, Here was spent. Here he grew, and loved, And wedded. Here the precious Mother in her Green old age had yielded to the sharp scythe