THE FAMILY.

Observer, Volume XXXVI, Issue 49, 12 August 1916, Page 23

THE FAMILY.

There's a girlie m her bed so '■■■'"■. Hark to the wind a-croon! She's wrapped in a silver web of sleep, ' Snug in her dream cocoon: • She hears the birds and crickets call, She stirs and smiles and loves them all, But somewhat less than she loves her doll-*— Heigh-o for the little maid! There's a laddie asleep in the house to-night— Hark to the sound of wings! His slumbers are filled* with a soft delight And strange ecstatic things; He dreams of brave knights on : a sunlit plain, Of fairy queens that soothly reign, That wave their wands to banish pain— Heigh-o for the sylvan glade. There's a mother of both. Hark! she gently sighs, Kneeling- beside them there. The long day ended, 'neath starlit skies She offers a broken "prayer ; But out on the field, where the wild blades leap. Where the. shrapnel burets and the bayonets sweep, One lies * quite still where a trench yawns deep, And the, toll of Mars is paid! H. Stanley Haskins.