Page:Pieces People Ask For.djvu/23

Rh He's taken out his furlough, and short enough it seemed: I often tell Mehitabel he'll think he only dreamed Of walking with her nights so bright you couldn't see a star, And hearing the swift tide come in across the harbor bar.

The stars that shine above the stripes, they light him southward now; The tide of war has swept him back; he's made a solemn vow To build himself no home-nest till his country's work is done: God bless the vow, and speed the work, my patriot, my son!

And yet it is a pretty place where his new house might be,— An orchard-road that leads your eye straight out upon the sea. The boy not work his father's farm? it seems almost a shame; But any selfish plan for him he'd never let me name.

He's re-enlisted for the war, for victory or for death; A soldier's grave, perhaps! the thought has half-way stopped my breath, And driven a cloud across the sun. My boy, it will not be! The war will soon be over, home again you'll come to me. He's re-enlisted; and I smiled to see him going too! There's nothing that becomes him half so well as army blue. Only a private in the ranks! but sure I am, indeed, If all the privates were like him, they'd scarcely captains need.

And I and Massachusetts share the honor of his birth,— The grand old State! to me the best in all the peopled earth! I cannot hold a musket, but I have a son who can; And I'm proud, for Freedom's sake, to be the mother of a man. Lucy Larcom.

SHE STOOD ON THE STAIR. stood at the turn of the stair,
 * With the rose-tinted light on her face,

And the gold of her hair gleaming out
 * From a mystical billow of lace.