Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/169

Rh

RACKS out over the wide white snow, Tracks this morning in rank and row, Broidered and braided in pearly dun— Worked with the light of the early sun.

See! on the sides of the lonely road, Where the woodman goes with a creaking load, Yon hieroglyphics; look you well, By the seeded plume of the pimpernel,

How a beaten track, as of little toes, Hither, and thither, and yonder, goes: An unthrifty chipmunk, out of food, Forages now in the winter wood.

Lighter and tinier, here and there, Like a line engraving, faint and fair, I see the path where the sparrow trod— Wee, trustful pensioner of God.

His monogram has the rabbit cut, With a flying leap and a huddled foot; Hot-pressed on the snowy page it lies: Bunny, his mark"—not over-wise.

Down by the spring, around the stack, About the barn, up hill and back, The heavy hoofs of the patient kine Dug tiny wells in a double line.