Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/272

 266 GARLAND OR HAWSER.

��GARLAND OR HAWSER.

JUST side by side, through the sunny weather, Two field-bouquets grew apace together; They laughed alike with their bright blue eyes On the open face of the summer skies ;

Alike were wet in the falling dew,

As the moon dropped silver their shadows through ;

And they bent alike to the summer rain,

Or smiled through tears at the sun again.

But the one was plucked by a lady fair, On her bodice bound, in her amber hair, While her dainty fingers their fibres wound, Till the blossomed hemp was a garland bound.

And the other left, till the ripened crop, Like a human thing, faded first atop, And was roughly torn by a menial grasp From the gentle Earth and her loving clasp.

Is the world at best but a lot unfair ? Here, a garland blooms in a woman s hair; There, another lies under careless feet, With its life, as we think it, incomplete.

Driving in ashore comes a keel to-night, And a rocket s flash lightens breakers white, While a voice goes by on the wailing blast, With a life-line out over darkness cast.

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