"Peace be with hearts that watch!" thus, heaven forgot, And all its hosts, true to the veins of blood, Thoughtful his spirit runs:--"'Tis now the hour When the lone matron, from her cottage door, Looks for her spouse into the moonlit ways; But hears no foot abroad in all the night. Then turns she in: the tale of murder done, In former days, by the blue forest's edge, Which way he must return--why tarries he?-- Comes o'er her mind; up starting quick, she goes To be assured that she has barred her door; Then sits anew. Her little lamp of oil Is all burnt out; the wasting embers whiten; And the cat winks before the drowsy fire. What sound was that? 'Tis but her own heart beating. Up rises she again; her little ones Are all asleep, she'll go and waken them, And hear their voices in the eerie night; But yet she pauses, loth to break their rest. God send the husband and the father home!
"No one looks out for me in all this world, No one have I to look for! Ah poor me! Well, well!" he murmurs meek. Turning, he locks His lonely door, and stumps away to bed.
How fresh the morning meadow of the spring, Pearl-seeded with the dew: adown its path, Bored by the worms of night, the Old Soldier takes His wonted walk, and drinks into his heart The gush and gurgle of the cold green stream. The huddled splendour of the April noon; Glancings of rain; the mountain-tops all quick With shadowy touches and with greening gleams; Blue bent the Bow of God; the coloured clouds, Soaked with the glory of the setting sun,-- These all are his for pleasure: his the Moon, Chaste huntress, dipping, o'er the dewy hills, Her silver buskin in the dying day.
The summer morn is up: the tapering trees Are all a-glitter. In his garden forth The Old Soldado saunters: hovering on Before him, oft upon the naked walk Rests the red butterfly; now full dispread; Now, in the wanton gladsomeness of life, Half on their hinges folding up its wings; Again full spread and still: o'erhead away, Lo! now it wavers through the liquid blue. But he intent from out their straw-roofed hives Watches his little foragers go forth, Boot on the buds to make, to suck the depths Of honey-throated blooms, and home return, Their thighs half smothered with the yellow dust. Dibble and hoe he plies; anon he props His heavy-beaded plants, and visits round His herbs of grace: the simple flowerets here Open their infant buttons; there the flowers Of preference blow, the lily and the rose.