Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/202

 196 THE WIFE S LETTER.

We love him so !&quot; Death gave no answer, Except to come within the gate.

And now I know that safe no longer

Falls the cottage-latch for me, Though I waiting watch beside it

With weary head and bending knee ; Yet with eyelids closed and weary,

Quite forgetting day or date, I dream again how bright the heaven

Whose portal was the garden-gate.

��THE WIFE S LETTER.

&quot; j\ TY letters?&quot; A shapely hand stretched out; IVl The gold of a yellow beard was stirred A moment over the sombre mouth, Guiltless of idle or wasted word.

��The grasp that had known a sword-hilt well Closed tightly over the silent things

Which the postal eddy drifts in heaps Where human life to an anchor clings.

This one, with a great official seal, And that, with the solemn legal air,

Are opened slowly and gravely read, Then closed with a sober, quiet care.

�� �