Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/124

 1 1 8 FROST-SMITTEN.

The strawberry-vine, red flushed, lay a-dying ;

Rifled and brown stood the ranks of the corn ; And only the eye of the brave artemisia

Looked fearlessly up in face of the morn.

��Snow-white and cold, tho the roof-tree is o er it, Peaceful and pallid, but bitterly chill,

There s something beloved lies smitten for ever Within the white cottage just under the hill.

When trees of the forest were ripened and ready,

When harvest had been gathered in, When gone was the task in the quaint, pleasant garden,

It was meet that his rest should begin.

So, peacefully, softly, like autumn leaves falling,

He gave up his spirit to God ; Past threescore and ten, with locks like a snow-drift,

We laid him down under the sod.

Now as I look from the grave by the orchard,

I think how the frost turned to dew, And mounted above with the souls of the flowers

Whose forms Nature s care shall renew.

Thus looking, I try to wait calmly for morning,

Yet wearily ever I grasp

And grope through the mists of this sorrowful dawning

For a hand that my own hand can clasp.

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