Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/188

This page needs to be proofread.

1 82 COURAGEOUS FEAR.

"Miss Nightingale can t sing at all ;" "Bob Lincoln gave a hop last fall ;" "The charming tenor have you heard? A most accomplished foreign bird." (The while two mother Robins fought About their broods as no birds ought.)

Oh touch me with thy fairie fern ; No language new, O Queen, I ll learn; Tis the same story o er and o er; Arcadia s gone it comes no more.

I wake and nod before the fire,

While Flite sings through his golden wire.

��COURAGEOUS FEAR.

��T

��HERE was war and disorder

The bulbs in the border Had mutinied, led by the sun ;

Mother Earth, their adviser, Had told them twas wiser To wait till the frost s work was done.

Very softly and slowly, With love true and holy,

She laid her brown hands on each head In the old mother fashion, Full of tender compassion,

In spite of the brave words they said.

�� �