Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/240

 234 A QUESTION.

And grandfather s queer childish fancies,

Unwatched, lead to fearful mishap ; Grandmother finds real discomfort

In crumples in kerchief and cap ; Poor Jack, fighting terrible fractions,

The school-boy s implacable foe, Calls loudly for Mabel. She listens,

And straightway her temples lie low.

Oh see at your feet, little Mabel,

Yon path winding up to yon door ! Oh seek in the isles of the ocean

For God-given duties no more ! In the quiet home-lighted horizon

You bound with the sound of a hymn, Go garner the sheaf of the present ;

The duties beyond it are dim.

��A QUESTION.

PRAY, may I ask you, country-lad, Whose smile no care can smother, Tho busy life throbs round about,

&quot;Have you written home to mother?&quot;

You are forgetting, aren t you, quite How fast the weeks went flying,

And that a little blotted sheet Unanswered still is lying?

�� �