Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/330

 324 AN OLD MAN.

��AN OLD MAN.

D man, old man, coming up the road ! Run, girls ! run fast to the school-house door !&quot; There they go, pell-mell, like a flock of sheep,

As I plod along, weary, weak, footsore. Do I look so old bearing thirty years ?

Have I then indeed such a terror grown That the children scare at my near approach On this old highway, long ago well known?

Weak and wicked both ; I deny it not

Old in sin I am since I walked this way, But the years are few since I fled at night ;

Ah ! the flitting seems but as yesterday, When sore from the stripes that I had not earned

That time (though I had many times before), I flung myself in the moonlight pale

Down, to lay my face on the garret-floor.

When the stolen steps of my mother came,

And her little figure all clad in white Like a blessed angel came drifting in

Where a wreck I lay in the fair moonlight, How she kissed the bruise on the swollen cheek,

While her tears fell like bitter rain ! How the loyal wife with the mother strove !

Well ! the grave-sod covers her wrong and pain.

&quot; Old man ! Old man !&quot; I will turn aside, I remember well that a quiet pool

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