Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/56

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50
STRAW PAPER.

Is there no jasper wall in sight,
Whose turrets catch thy silver light,
With gates where weary souls go through?

Unanswering still, the page of white
Circles about my hearth to-night,
Touching the old familiar things
Softly as angels' tender wings.
Good-night, new moon! old moon, good-night!




STRAW PAPER.[1]


Through the thousand sounds of the summer noons—
Through the cricket's chirp and the robin's tune—
Through the ceaseless talk of the brook astray,
Telling leaf and stone why she came that way,

There arose a voice. It was sweet and fine,
And its tongue unknown to such ears as mine;
But the bees and the birds, and the busy things
That have nests afield, which they roof with wings,

Waited close to hear, each with bended head,
What the moaning soul of the grain-field said,
While a friendly cricket whom once I knew
Gave a free translation she vowed was true:


  1. Used extensively in printing.