Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/83

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SCATTERED ROSES.
77


But if, in the happy mansion
Some shadows there be that wait,
And some that crowd in beside us,
We fain would leave at the gate,

O Master, go in before us;
Be thou evermore our guest,
And then, in the sun or shadow,
Our home with Thy smile is blest.




SCATTERED ROSES.


TIS a pretty German story,
Fresh as falling mountain-dews,
Told us, merely as an item,
In the page of foreign news.

Gretchen, with her banded tresses
Braided close like ropes of gold,
Comely skirt, and snowy kerchief
Blossomed from the bodice fold,

Walks beside the cart of flowers,
Dreamy, sad, and full of thought ;
Thinking all the while of Gottlieb,
Not of business, as she ought.

"Franz," the rough old dog who loved him,
Harnessed in the shafts to draw,

7*