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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16108-h.zip b/16108-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f34d4e6 --- /dev/null +++ b/16108-h.zip diff --git a/16108-h/16108-h.htm b/16108-h/16108-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c2ce77 --- /dev/null +++ b/16108-h/16108-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3714 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"> + +<title> + D E B R I S, + by Madge Morris +</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + body {margin:10%; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; } + hr { width: 50%; } + hr.full { width: 100%; } + .foot { margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 95%; } + img {border: 0;} + HR { width: 33%; text-align: center; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; } + .figleft {float: left;} + .figright {float: right;} + .toc { margin-left: 15%; margin-bottom: 0em;} + CENTER { padding: 10px;} + PRE { margin-left: 25%;} + // --> +</style> + +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Debris, by Madge Morris + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Debris + Selections From Poems + +Author: Madge Morris + +Release Date: July 2, 2005 [EBook #16108] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEBRIS *** + + + + +Produced by Michael Gray + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1> + D E B R I S +</h1> +<center> +SELECTIONS FROM POEMS +</center> +<center><b> +BY MADGE MORRIS +</b></center> +<center> +SACRAMENTO<br /> + +H. S. CROCKER & CO., PRINTERS<br /> + +1881. +</center> +<br /> + +<center> +To the one who, reading, may fancy—<br /> + + With a kindly thought for me—<br /> + +There's a grain of gold in its driftings,<br /> + + I dedicate this "Debris." +</center> + + + + +<br /> +<br /> +<hr> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<center> +<table summary=""> +<tr><td> + + +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_PREF"> +PREFACE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0002"> +MYSTERY OF CARMEL +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0003"> +WASTED HOURS. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0004"> +ROCKING THE BABY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0005"> +"I DON'T CARE." +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0006"> +A STAINED LILY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0007"> +A VALENTINE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0008"> +WHICH ONE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0009"> +LIFE'S WAY +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0010"> +UNCLE SAM'S SOLILOQUY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0011"> +NAY, DO NOT ASK. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0012"> +A PICTURE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0013"> +HANG UP YOUR STOCKING. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0014"> +OPENING THE GATE FOR PAPA. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0015"> +WHITE HONEYSUCKLE +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0016"> +ESTRANGEMENT. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0017"> +BRING FLOWERS. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0018"> +GOOD-BYE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0019"> +IN THE TWILIGHT. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0020"> +HOME. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0021"> +WHY? +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0022"> +OUT IN THE COLD. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0023"> +TO JENNIE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0024"> +WATCHING THE SHADOWS. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0025"> +I GIVE THEE BACK THY HEART. +</a></p> + + + +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0026"> +LIGHT BEYOND. +</a></p> + +</td><td> + +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0027"> +A NEGLECTED "WOMAN'S RIGHT." +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0028"> +WOULD YOU CARE? +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0029"> +A THOUGHT OF HEAVEN. +</a></p> + + + +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0030"> +CONSOLANCE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0031"> +WHEN THE ROSES GO. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0032"> +THE DIFFERENCE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0033"> +BEWARE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0034"> +A REGRET. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0035"> +"IT IS LIFE TO DIE." +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0036"> +O, SPEAK IT NOT. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0037"> +A SHATTERED IDOL. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0038"> +POOR LITTLE JOE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0039"> +FATE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0040"> +THE GHOSTS IN THE HEART. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0041"> +ONLY A TRAMP. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0042"> +PUT FLOWERS ON MY GRAVE. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0043"> +OLD AUNT LUCY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0044"> +UNSPOKEN WORDS. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0045"> +O! TAKE AWAY YOUR FLOWERS. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0046"> +RAIN. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0047"> +I LOVE HIM FOR HIS EYES. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0048"> +ONLY. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0049"> +SOMEBODY'S BABY'S DEAD. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0050"> +THE WITHERED ROSEBUD. +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2H_4_0051"> +MY SHIPS HAVE COME FROM SEA. +</a></p> + + +</td></tr> +</table> +</center> + + +<a name="2H_PREF"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + PREFACE. +</h2> +<p> +The waif is born of emergency, and timidly launched on the rough sea of +opinion. Critic, touch it gently; it assumes nothing—has nothing to +assume; and your scalpel can only pain its +</p> +<center> +AUTHOR. +</center> + +<a name="2H_4_0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + MYSTERY OF CARMEL +</h2> +<pre> +The Mission floor was with weeds o'ergrown, +And crumbling and shaky its walls of stone; +Its roof of tiles, in tiers and tiers, +Had stood the storms of a hundred years. +An olden, weird, medieval style +Clung to the mouldering, gloomy pile, +And the rhythmic voice of the breaking waves +Sang a lonesome dirge in its land of graves. +As I walked in the Mission old and gray— + The Mission Carmel at Monterey. +</pre> +<pre> +An ancient owl went fluttering by, +Scared from his haunt. His mournful cry +Wakened the echoes, till roof and wall +Caught and re-echoed the dismal call +Again and again, till it seemed to me +Some Jesuit soul, in mockery— +Stripped of rosary, gown, and cowl— +Haunted the place, in this dreary owl. +Surely I shivered with fright that day, +Alone in the Mission, old and gray— + The Mission Carmel at Monterey. +</pre> +<pre> +Near the chapel vault was a dungeon grim, +And they say that many a chanted hymn +Has rung a knell on the moldy air +For luckless errant prisoned there, +As kneeling monk and pious nun +Sang orison at set of sun. +A single window, dark and small, +Showed opening in the heavy wall, +Nor other entrance seemed attained +That erst had human footstep gained. +I paused before the uncanny place +And peered me into its darksome space. +Had it of secret aught to tell, +That locked up darkness kept it well. +I turned, and lo! by my side there stood +A being of strangest naturehood. +Startled, I glanced him o'er and o'er, +Wondering I noted him not before. +His form was stooped with the weight of years, +And on his cheek was a trace of tears; +Over all his face a shade of pain +That deepened and vanished, and came again. +Fixed he his woeful eyes on me— +Through my very soul they seemed to see. +And lightly he laid his hand on mine— +His hand was cold as the vestal shrine. +"'Tis haunted," he said, "haunted, and he +Who dares at night-noon go with me +To this cursed place, by phantoms trod, +Must fear not devil, man, nor God." +"Tell me the story," I cried, "tell me!" +And frightened was I at my bravery. +A curious smile his thin lips curved, +That well had my bravery unnerved. +And this is the story he told that day +To me in the Mission old and gray— + The Mission Carmel at Monterey. +</pre> +<pre> +"Each midnight, since have seventy years +Begun their cycle around the spheres, +Two faces have looked from that window there. +One is a woman's, young and fair, +With tender eyes and floating hair. +Love, and regret, and dumb despair, +Are told in each tint of the fair sweet face. +The other is crowned with a courtly grace, +Gazing, with all a lover's pride, +On the beautiful woman by his side. +Anon! a change flits o'er his mien, +And baffled rage in his glance is seen. +Paler they grow as the hours go by, +With the pallor that comes with the summons to die. +Slowly fading, and shrinking away, +Clutched in the grasp of a gaunt decay, +Till the herald of morn on the sky is thrown; +Then a shriek, a curse, and a dying moan, +Comes from that death-black window there. +A mocking laugh rings out on the air, +From that darkful place, in the nascent dawn, +And the faces that looked from the window are gone. +Seventy years, when the Spanish flag +Floated above yon beetling crag, +And this dearthful mission place was rife +With the panoply of busy life; +Hard by, where yon canyon, deep and wide, +Sweeps it adown the mountain side, +A cavalier dwelt with his beautiful bride. +Oft to the priestal shrive went she; +As often, stealthily, followed he. +The padre Sanson absolved and blessed +The penitent, and the sin-distressed, +Nor ever before won devotee +So wondrous a reverence as he. +A-night, when the winds played wild and high, +And the ocean rocked it to the sky, +An earthquake trembled the shore along, +Hushing on lip of praise its song, +And jarred to its center this Mission strong. +When the morning broke with a summer sun, +The earth was at rest, the storm was done. +Still the Mission tower'd in its stately pride; +Still the cottage smiled by the canyon-side; +But never the priest was there to bless, +And the cottage roof was tenantless. +Vainly they sought for the padre, dead, +For the cottage dwellers; amazed, they said +'Twas a miracle; but since that day +There's a ghost in the Mission old and gray— + The Mission Carmel of Monterey +</pre> +<pre> +"A sequel there is to that tale," said he, +"Of the way and the truth I hold the key." +"Show me the way," I cried, "Show me +To the depth of this curious mystery!" +He waved me to follow; my heart stood still +Under the ban of a mightier will +Than mine. A terror of icy chill +O'er-shivered my being from hand to brain, +Freezing the blood in each pulsing vein, +As I followed this most mysterious guide +Through the solid floor at the chancel side, +Into a passage whose stifling breath +Reeked with the pestilence of death. +Down through a subterranean vault, +Over broken steps with never a halt, +Till we stood in the midst of a spacious room, +A charnel-house in its shroud of gloom. +Only a window, narrow and small, +Left in the build of the heavy wall, +Through which the flickering sunbeams died, +Showed passway to the world outside. +Slowly my eyes to the darkness grew, +And I saw in the gloom, or rather knew, +That my feet had touched two skeleton forms, +One closely clasped in the other's arms. +Recoiling, I shuddered and turned my face +From the fleshless mockery of embrace. +Again o'er a heap of rubbish and rust, +I stumbled and caught in the moth and dust +What hardly a sense of my soul believes— +A mold-stained package of parchment leaves! +A hideous bat flapped into my face! +O'ercome with horror, I fled the place, +And stood again with my curious guide +On the solid floor, at the chancel's side. +But, lo! in a moment the age-bowed seer +Was a darkly frowning cavalier, +Gazing no longer in woeful trance, +Vengeance blazed in his every glance. +Then a mocking laugh rang the Mission o'er, +And I stood alone by the chapel door; +And, save for the mold-stained parchment leaves, +I had thought it the vision that night-mare weaves. +Hardly a sense of my soul believes, +Yet I held in my hand the parchment leaves. +Careful I noted them, one by one, +Each was a letter in rhyming run, +Written over and over, in tenderest strain, +By fingers that never will write again. +I strung them together, a tale to tell, +And named it "The Mystery of Carmel." +And these are the letters I found that day, +In the mission ruin, old and gray— + The Mission Carmel of Monterey: +</pre> +<center> +TO THE HOLY FATHER SANSON +</center> +<pre> +Oh, holy father, list thee to my prayer! + I may not kneel to thee as others kneel, +And tell my heart-aches with the suppliant's air, + But fiercer burns the fire I must conceal. +</pre> +<pre> +My soul is groping in the mists of doubt, + The sunlight and the shadows all are gone, +Only a cold, gray cloud my life's about, + Nor ever vision of a fairer dawn. +</pre> +<pre> +A father ne'er my brow in loving smoothed, + Nor taught my baby tongue to lisp his name; +No mother's voice my childish sorrows soothed, + Nor sought my wild, imperious will to tame. +</pre> +<pre> +Yet ran my life, like some bright bubbling spring, + Too full of thoughtless happiness to care +If that the future might more gladness bring, + Or might its skies be clouded or be fair. +</pre> +<pre> +Afar upon the purple hills of Spain— + Since waned the moons of half a year ago— +I sported, reckless as the laughing main, + Nor dreamed in life a thought of grief to know. +</pre> +<pre> +To-day I pine here in a chain whose gall + Is bitterer than drop of wormwood brought +From that salt sea where nothing lives, and all + The recompense my willfulness has brought. +</pre> +<pre> +Oh, holy father, list thee to my prayer! + And though I may not kneel as others kneel, +And tell my heart-aches with a suppliant air, + I crave they grace a sickened soul to heal. +</pre> +<pre> +Here, close beside this sacred font of gold, + My humble prayer, oh, father, I will lay, +With all its weight of misery untold; + And wait impatient that which thou wilt say + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +When to the font, this morn, my lips I pressed, + A fairy's gift my fingers trembled o'er; +A sweeter prayer ne'er smile of angel blessed, + Nor gemmed a tiar that the priesthood wore. +</pre> +<pre> +The secret of they grief I may not know, + Since that thy lips refuse the tale to tell; +Methinks, dear child, it was the sound of woe + That woke an echo in my heart's deep well. +</pre> +<pre> +The wail of a spirit that a-yearning gropes + In darkness for the sunlight that is fled; +A broken idol in secret wept, and hopes— + Crushed hopes—that are to thee as are the dead. +</pre> +<pre> +A tender memory ling'ring yet of when + Each bounding pulse beat faster with its joy; +A something that allured, and won, and then + With waking fled, and years may not destroy +</pre> +<pre> +The impress which it left upon thy brain + But seek thee, child, grief's ravaging to stay? +Thy tears might fall as falls the show'ring rain, + They could not wash the heart's deep scars away. +</pre> +<pre> +Repine thee not; shroud not they faith in gloom; + Shrink not to meet a disappointment's frown; +Away beyond the narrow bordered tomb, + Who here have borne the cross may wear the crown. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<pre> +Whisper to him, fairies, whisper— + Whisper softly in his ear +That some one is waiting, waiting, + Listening his step to hear. +</pre> +<pre> +Fairies, if he knew his presence + Would a demon's spell allay, +Would he heed your timid whisperings? + Would he—will he come to-day? + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +Fairies whisper, every whisper, + In the silence of the night, +And he catches the soft murmurs + Floating in the starry light. +</pre> +<pre> +And they tell him; yes, they tell him, + All in accents sweet and clear, +Of the beautiful Hereafter + That is ever drawing near. +</pre> +<pre> +There are loved ones, waiting, waiting, + For his footfall on the shore; +They will welcome his appearing— + They will greet him o'er and o'er. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<pre> +Oh, would the fairies to her whisper + The truths which they to him impart, +Teach her a beautiful hereafter, + A Heaven to bless a tired heart. +</pre> +<pre> +Yet thinks she that the dear ones waiting + Would envy not the boon she craves— +To rear fair friendship's sacred alter + Where love and hope sleep in their graves. +</pre> +<pre> +She knows not that a loving welcome + Will wait her in a realm of light, +Nought of a future meeting whispers, + No faith illumes her soul's dark night. +</pre> +<pre> +But oh! she knows, has by experience, + The saddest of all lessons learned; +Knows that she gathered dead-sea apples, + Which in her hands to ashes turned. +</pre> +<pre> +She knows into a trammelled torrent, + Is changed her life's free flowing tide; +Knows that her hand no oar is holding, + With which her drifting bark to guide. +</pre> +<pre> +She knows, yes, knows that, like the mirage, + Which for the thirsty traveler gleamed, +The sweet ideal she fondly cherished + Was never there; it only seemed. +</pre> +<pre> +If what she knows is to her proven + A false, deluding, fleeting show, +Can she, generous spirit, can she + Trust blindly what she does not know? +</pre> +<pre> +But if for this he shuts against her + The heart that's shining in his eyes, +She'll bring the gift that for the Peri + Unbarred the gate of paradise. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +If she'll left him be her teacher + In the mysteries of life, +In the spirit's grand unfoldment + Far beyond this world of strife, +</pre> +<pre> +A sacred altar he will build her, + And dedicate to friendship true, +And this shall be their bond of union, + More constant that all others knew. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<pre> +Kind teacher, henceforth be it mine, +To kneel at friendship's sacred shrine, +And hope's bright budding flowers entwine + Into a garland for they brow. +And thou shalt wait not for the hours +That gem creation's radiant towers, +To woo thee to elysian bowers, + But wear it now. +</pre> +<pre> +Too long a dreamer have I been, +Too long life's dark side only seen; +And if thou canst, while thus I kneel, +The mystery of life reveal, + Then gladly will I learn of thee. +For as on flowers the dewdrops fall, +As sunbeams break the storm-cloud's pall, +As pardon comes to lives which blame +Has crushed beneath its weight, so came + Thy sympathy to me. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> + Life is love, and only love, + Love that had its source above. +It wreathes with flowers the chastening rod, +And diamond decks the throne of God. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<pre> +If "life is love, and only love," + Then never have I lived before; +But for love's sack I'll sit me down + And careful con the lesson o'er. +</pre> +<pre> +I fain would win the shining goal, + So far away, so seeming fair, +But could not reach its hights alone; + Then, teacher, take me, take me there. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +Thy teacher, then, will take thee there, + And ever watch with tender care, +To guard they way to loftiest aim, + And his reward thy love shall claim. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<pre> +O, inconsistent teacher, + He'd knowledge give away; +Fill head and heart, from tome of art, + Then take me for his pay. +</pre> +<pre> +He'd kindly lead me to the realm + Where joyous freedom reigns, +He'd teach my soul love's sweet control, + Then claim it for his pains. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +Ah! Reyenita, do not charge + To selfishness thy teacher's plea, +He seeks thine every wish to bless, + His deepest fault is loving thee. +"Heaven's kingdom," said the Nazerene, +"Is in the heart;" sweet fairy queen +Thou rulest along this realm of mine, +Canst say I have no place in thine? + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<pre> +They boast of Ormuz's milk-white pearls, + The ruby's magic art, +And proudly wear the crystal drop + That fires the diamond's heart. +</pre> +<pre> +And these may admiration claim, + And countless wealth may sway, +But rarer gem was given to me, + One golden summer day. +</pre> +<pre> +Its wondrous tints, a brilliant glow, + Emit in darkest gloom, +A sweeter fragrance 'round it clings, + Than breath of eastern bloom. +</pre> +<pre> +Were all earth's costly jewels thrown + In one great glittering heap, +They could not buy for ev'n a day + The gem I'd selfish keep. +</pre> +<pre> +Yet 'twas not won from pearly depths, + Nor gleaned from diamond mine, +Nor all the chemist's subtlety + Its substance could define. +</pre> +<pre> +It ne'er was set in band of fold + Some dainty hand to grace, +Ne'er shone in diadem to deck + A brow of kingly race. +</pre> +<pre> +For me alone, a wizard spell + Lies prisoned in its beams, +Hours of enchanted ecstacy + And days of Eden dreams. +</pre> +<pre> +Wouldst know the precious gift with which + For worlds I would not part? +The priceless jewel is they love, + Its setting is my heart. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +Oh, in the hush of midnight's hour, + When darkness sleeps on land and sea, +How oft in dreams, sweet fragile flower, + Thou'st come to bless and comfort me. +</pre> +<pre> +O, in the hush of midnight's hour, + How oft from taunting dreams I start, +To find thee but a fancy flower— + Thou cherished idol of my heart. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<p> +I've a beautiful home, where I live in my dreams, +So joyous and happy—an Eden it seems; +All beautiful things in nature and are +Are blending to rapture the mind and the heart; +No discords to jar, no dissensions arise, +'Tis calm as Italia's ever blue skies, +When kissed by the bright rosy blush of the morn; +And a voice of the spheres on the breezes is borne, +Soft as the murmur of sea-tinted shells, +Sweet as the chiming of far away bells; +And grief cannot enter, nor trouble nor care, +And the proud peerless prince of my soul, he is there. +</p> +<pre> +In my beautiful home from the cold world apart, +He holds me so close to his fast beating heart; +More enchanting his voice than the syren-wrapt song, +O'er the wind-dimpled ocean soft floating along, +As he whispers his love in love's low passioned tone, +Such home, and such lover, no other has known. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<p> +O, let us leave this world behind— +Its gains, its loss, its praise, its blame— +Not seeking fame, nor fearing shame, +Some far secluded land we'll find, +And build thy dream-home, you and I, +And let this foolish world go by. +</p> +<pre> +A paradise of love and bliss! +Delicious draughts in Eden bowers, +Of peace, and rest, and quiet hours, +We'll drink, for what we've missed in this. +The shafts of malice we'll defy, +And let this foolish world go by. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<pre> +Life of my life, my soul's best part, +I could not live without thee now; +And yet this love must break my heart, + Or break a sacred vow. +</pre> +<pre> +Which shall it be? an answer oft +From puzzling doubts I've sought to wake; +Must joy, or misery, hence be mine, + Must heart or promise break? +</pre> +<pre> +Alone, Heaven's highest court would prove +A desolated land to me; +Earth's barest, barren desert wild, + A paradise with thee. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +Thou hast beamed on my pathway, a vision of light, + To guide and to bless from afar; +To illume with thy smile the dead chill of night, + My star, my bright, beautiful star. +</pre> +<pre> +The sun pales before thee, the moon is a blot + On the sky where thine own splendors are; +And dark is the day where thy presence is not, + My star, my bright, beautiful star. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<p> +O love, do not call me a star! +'Tis too cold and bright, and too far +Away from your arms; I would be, +The life drops that flow in your veins, +The pulses that throb in your heart. +My bosom should be the warm sea +Of forgetfulness, tinged with the stains +Of the sunset, when day-dreams depart; +You should drink at its fountain of kisses, +Drink mad of its fathomless deep; +</p> +<pre> +Submerged in an ocean of blisses, +I'd be something to kiss and to keep. +Loving, and tender, and true, +I'd be nearer, oh! nearer to you +Than the glittering meteors are; +Then, love, do not call me a star. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +Thou'st made for me an atmosphere of life; + The very air is brighter from thine eyes, +They are so soft and beautiful, and rife + With all we can imagine of the skies. +</pre> +<pre> +O woman, where is they resistless power; + I swore the livery of Heaven to grace, +Yet stand, to-day, a sacrilegious tower, + Perjured by the witchery of thy face. + SANSON. +</pre> +<center> +TO SANSON +</center> +<pre> +Then, love, I'll give thee back thy perjured vow; + I would not hold thee with one pleading breath; +It may be best to leave the pathway now, + That can but lead to death. +I'll crush the agonies that burning swell, + And say farewell. + REVENITA. +</pre> +<center> +TO REVENITA +</center> +<pre> +"Farewell?" No, not farewell, I'll worship ever + Thy form divine. +No death's despair, no voice of doom shall sever + My heart from thine. +</pre> +<pre> +Thou'st crowned me with they love and bade me wear it, + I kiss the shrine. +I will not give thee up, nay, here I swear it, + That thou art mine. + * * * * * * * * * * +A desecrated holiness is o'er me, + I've held the Thyrsus cup; +I've dared the thunderbolts of Heaven for thee, + I will not give up. + SANSON. + + World, farewell! +</pre> +<p> +And thou pale tape light, by whose fast-dying flame I write these +words—the last my hand shall pen—farewell! What is't to die? To be +shut in a dungeon's walls and starved to death? She knows, and soon will +I. She sought to learn of me, and I to teach to her, the mystery of +life. Ha, ha! Who claimed her by the church's law has given us both to +learn the mystery of death. What was't I loved? The eyes that thrilled +me through and through with their magnetic subtlety? They're there, set +on my face; but where's their lifened light? What was't I loved? The +mouth whose coral redness I have buried in my own? 'Tis there, shrunk +'gainst two rows of dead pale pearls, and cold and colorless as lip of +statue carved of marble. Was it the form whose perfect outline stamped +it with divinity? It's there, but 'reft of all its winsome roundness, +and stiffening in the chill of death. It makes me cold to look upon its +rigidness. But just this hour the breath went out; was't that I loved? +'Twas this I clasped and kissed. What is it that we've christened love, +that glamours men to madness, and stains with falsehood virgin purity? +It made this grewsome charnel vault a part of Heaven—the graves there +of those murdered knaves made rests of roses for our heads; it made him +spring the bolt and lock us in. Where is the creed's foundation? I've +shrived a thousand souls—I cannot now absolve my own. To quench this +awful thirst, I cut an artery in my arm and sucked its blood. The +thirstness did not cease. They lied. 'Twas not the vultures at +Prometeus' heart, 'twas hunger at his vitals gnawed. The salt drops that +I swallowed from that vein have set my brain on fire. What's that? The +ground's a-tremble 'neath my feet as touched with life. Earth, rend your +breast and let me in! For anything but this dire darkness, made alive +with vengeful eye-balls—his eyes! They glare with hate at me. I heard +him laugh but now. For anything but this most loving corpse whose head +caressing rests it on my feet. Ah, no, I did not mean it thus; I would +not get away alone. I loved that corpse. It was the sweetest bit of +human frailty that to man e'er brought a blessing or a curse. I turned +from Dias' holy grail to taste its nectar. Hell, throw a-wide your +sulphur-blazoned gates, I'll grasp it in my arms and make the plunge! +Hist! what was that? I heard him laugh again. Laugh, fiend, you cannot +hurt me more. Ah! Reyenita, mine in life you were, in death you shall be +mine. When this clogged blood has stopped the wheels of life, I'll put +my arms around your neck, I'll lay my face against your frozen one, and +thus I'll die. When this foul place has crumbled to the sunlight, some +relic-hunting lunatic will stumble o'er our bones, and pitiless will +weave a tale for eyes more pitiless to read. Back, Stygian ghoul! +Death's on me now. I feel his rattle in my throat! My limbs are blocks +of ice! My heart has tuned it with the muffled dead-march drum! A jar of +crashing worlds is in my ears! A drowsy faintness creeps upon—— +</p> +<pre> + The seal is broken, the mystery tell; + You have read the letters, what do they tell? + Do they tell you the story they told that day + To me, in the Mission old and gray— + The Mission Carmel at Monterey? +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + WASTED HOURS. +</h2> +<pre> +If that thy hand with heart-will sought, + To work with Christ-love underlying, +But ere thou hadst accomplished aught + Time passed thee by while vainly trying, + The wasted hour, the vain endeavor, + Will wait thee in the far forever. +</pre> +<pre> +If thou hadst toiled from dawn till eve, + But felt no thrill of joy in giving +No heart made glad, no want relieved, + Lived but for selfish love of living, + Though idle hours went by thee never, + The hours are lost to thee forever. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + ROCKING THE BABY. +</h2> +<pre> +I hear her rocking the baby— + Her room is just next to mine— +And I fancy I feel the dimpled arms + That round her neck entwine, +As she rocks, and rocks the baby, + In the room just next to mine. +I hear her rocking the baby + Each day when the twilight comes, +And I know there's a world of blessing and love + In the "baby bye" she hums. +I can see the restless fingers + Playing with "mamma's rings," +And the sweet little smiling, pouting mouth, + That to hers in kissing clings, +As she rocks and sings to the baby, + And dreams as she rocks and sings. +</pre> +<pre> +I hear her rocking the baby, + Slower and slower now, +And I know she is leaving her good-night kiss + On its eyes, and cheek, and brow +From her rocking, rocking, rocking, + I wonder would she start, +Could she know, through the wall between us, + She is rocking on a heart. +While my empty arms are aching + For a form they may not press +And my emptier heart is breaking + In its desolate loneliness +I list to the rocking, rocking, + In the room just next to mine, +And breathe a prayer in silence, + At a mother's broken shrine, +For the woman who rocks her baby + In the room just next to mine. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + "I DON'T CARE." +</h2> +<pre> +"I don't care," we hear it oft + And oft, the words are seeming fair; +But many a heartache lies beneath + A careless "I don't care!" +</pre> +<pre> +In every age, from every tongue, + The vain assertions fell; +But oh, trust not the cheating words, + For never truth they tell! +Hearts may grow sick with hope deferred, + Be crushed with black despair, +But lips, too proud to own defeat, + Will whisper, "I don't care!" +</pre> +<pre> +A thoughtless friend flings out in jest— + As jesters always do— +A deadly shaft you wince beneath, + You know the story's true; +But while the dart has pierced your heart, + And poisoned, rankles there, +You look amused, and answer with + A smiling, "I don't care!" +</pre> +<pre> +When Fortune's favors are withdrawn, + And friends like shadows fled, +When all your fondest dreams are gone, + Your dearest hopes are dead, +You curse the fickle goddess, then, + Who wrought you such despair, +Yet hide chagrin beneath a frown, + And mutter, "I don't care!" +</pre> +<pre> +The veteran, battle-scarred, who fills + A nation's honored place, +Feels keener than his saber's point, + Unmerited disgrace. +With indignation all aflame + He meets some rival's stare; +But for all answer gives the worlds + A freezing "I don't care!" +</pre> +<pre> +A woman's heart is trifled with, + Her hopes are ground to dust, +Her proud soul humbled with neglect, + Betrayed her sacred trust, +Yet, while to desperation stung, + With death and ruin there, +She'll crush the tears and cheat you with + A laughing "I don't care?" +</pre> +<pre> +"I don't care!" 'tis but a breath, + The words are seeming fair, +But many a heartache lies beneath + A careless "I don't care!" +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + A STAINED LILY. +</h2> +<pre> +Some lilies grew by a brook-side, + Tall and white, and cold, +And lifted up to the sunshine + Their great red hearts of gold. +</pre> +<pre> +And near to their bed grew mosses, + rank vines, and flowers small, +And loathsome weeds, and thistles, + And the sunlight warmed them all. +</pre> +<pre> +Anon, the proud white lilies + Were gathered one by one, +Each to crown a festal + Rarest under the sun. +</pre> +<pre> +One lily stooped to the brooklet, + Her face she knew was fair, +And the face of flowing water + Mirrored her image there. +</pre> +<pre> +A hand upraised in envy, + Or carelessness, or jest, +Flung from the turbid water, + Mud, on the lily's breast. +</pre> +<pre> +And all the proud, white lilies + Turned their faces away, +And nobody plucked that lily, + And day, and night, and day +</pre> +<pre> +She wept for her ruined beauty: + And the dew-drops, and the rain, +Touched with her tears, in pity + Fell on the muddy stain. +</pre> +<pre> +Still stood she in her grieving + Day, and night, and day; +Nor tears, nor dew, nor rain-drops, + Could fade the stain away. +</pre> +<pre> +Pining in desolation, + Shunned by each of her kind, +Sought she a bitter solace + In creatures of a coarser mind. +</pre> +<pre> +But the breath of the nettle stung her, + And the thistle's rude embrace +Burned her sensitive nature, + And scarred the fair, stained face. +</pre> +<pre> +Lower drooped the lily, + And died at the feet of the weeds; +And only the tender mosses + Ministered to her needs. +</pre> +<pre> +And still the tall while lilies + Stand as cold, and proud, +And still the weeds and thistles + Against the lilies crowd. +</pre> +<pre> +Alike the same warm sunbeams, + On weed and flower fall, +Alike by the same soil nourished, + And the great God made them all. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + A VALENTINE +</h2> +<pre> +I love thee for the soul that shines + Within thine eyes' soft beaming, +From out whose depths the prisoned fires + Of intellect are gleaming. +</pre> +<pre> +I love thee for the mind that soars + Beyond earth's narrow keeping, +That measures suns, and stars, and worlds, + Through boundless limits sweeping. +</pre> +<pre> +I love thee for the voice whose power + Can in my heart awaken +To passioned life each slumbering chord + The ruder tones have shaken. +</pre> +<pre> +Thou ne'er, perchance, mayst feel the chain + With which this love has bound thee, +Nor dream thee of the hand that flung + Its glittering links around thee. +</pre> +<pre> +And vainly mayst thou deem the task + Thy captive bounds to sever— +Who madly dates to love thee now + Will love thee on forever. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + WHICH ONE +</h2> +<pre> +Each was as fair as the other, + And both as my life were dear; +And the voices that lisped me mother, + Heaven's music in my ear. +</pre> +<pre> +One faded from life—and mother, + And died in the summer dawn; +And I turned away from the other + And wept for the child that was gone. +</pre> +<pre> +Then I lay in a weird sleep-vision, + Before me an earth dark scene, +And the land of the sweet Elysian, + And only a grave between. +</pre> +<pre> +One child soft called me mother + Out from the shining door, +And smile and beckoned; the other + Unconsciously played on the floor. +</pre> +<pre> +One's path, to my inward seeing, + Was light with a wondrous day, +And led to the heights of being, + And an angel showed the way. +</pre> +<pre> +The other lay where Marah's + Hot sands with snares are strewn— +Through many a darksome forest, + And the way was roughly hewn. +</pre> +<pre> +A faith to my soul was given— + The weird sleep-vision o'er— +And I turned from the child in heaven + To the child that played on the floor. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + LIFE'S WAY +</h2> +<pre> +Good-bye, sweetheart, he said, and clasped her hand, + And rained his kisses on her tear-wet face; +Then broke away, and in a foreign land. + For her dear sake, sought gold, that he might place +</pre> +<pre> +Love's jeweled crown upon his queen's fair brow, + And pour his hard-won treasures at her feet; +And swore, than Heaven, than life itself, his vow + To her he held more sacred and more sweet. +</pre> +<pre> +She waited as the woman only may + Whose eyes are blinded oft with unshed tears; +Lines on her forehead grew, and threads of gray; + The weary days crept into weary years. +</pre> +<pre> +"Oh stars, go down! Oh sun, be shrouded now! + My love comes not; he does not live," she said; +And brushed the curls he'd kissed back from her brow, + And pout on mourning for her dead. +</pre> +<pre> +And still as oft the day came round that he + Had left his warm good-bye upon her lips, +As oft she sought the head-land by sea, + And longing watched the far-off white-sailed ships. +</pre> +<pre> +To-day, the low sand-beach was over-strewn; + Torn sail, and broken spar and human form, +'Gulfed by the waves, and crushed, and then out-thrown— + A ship went down in yester-night's wild storm. +</pre> +<pre> +She walked among the debris, and the dead, + As some sweet mercy-sister on her round, +Scanning each up-turned face with nameless dread, + For aught of life; her tireless searching found +</pre> +<pre> +A babe—a waif with tawny tangled locks, + And great blue eyes with wonder brimming o'er; +Of all the human freight wrecked on the rocks, + The only living thing that washed ashore. +</pre> +<pre> +A pearl-gemmed golden case upon its breast + She oped, then stared, her eyes a-sudden wild, +A name, a pictured face told all the rest; + His name—his face—his child! +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + UNCLE SAM'S SOLILOQUY. +</h2> +<pre> +I'm a century old and more to-day— + A ripe old age for a modern man,— +Yet they who rocked my cradle, they say, + Predicted a thousand years my span; +They christened me at the fount of prayer, +And gave me a star-gemmed robe to wear. +</pre> +<pre> +My first free breath was battle-smoke + A prayerful nurses did not abhor +The sounds that first my ear awoke— + The clash and din and shout of war. +They pressed in my hand a crown of might +And pointed my way to the eagle's flight. +</pre> +<pre> +Cannon and sword were my playthings to bless, + (Dangerous toys for a babe to try,) +The stirring reveille my more caress, + The wild tattoo was my lullaby; +And well, methinks, as they years have run, +Have I wrought the work my sires begun. +</pre> +<pre> +An infant prodigy I, and ere + Expired a tenth of my granted day, +I wrested from lion-grasp the spear— + A nation's power I held in sway; +I broke the gives from freedom's graves, +And steam and lightning I bound my slaves. +</pre> +<pre> +I flung my starred robe on the breeze, + From burning tropic to arctic cold. +On distant isles, in distant seas, + A foot-hold gained with sword and gold. +Atlantic's slope and Pacific's strand +I bound together with an iron band. +</pre> +<pre> +But of late I've premature grown old; + There's something wrong with the clothes I wear; +There is something wrong with the helm I hold, + Else I hold it wrong,—there's wrong somewhere. +Disease too has thrown me his poisoned dart; +His workman are "striking" right at my heart. +</pre> +<pre> +My head is so strangely vision thrilled + With plans to evade the demon's stay, +But all the plots that my brain have filled + Only have served to augment his sway, +And on my feet, at the sunset's door, +Is spreading a troublesome grievous sore. +</pre> +<pre> +I'm growing ill I can plainly see, + And many prescribe my pain to ease, +But somehow each medicine proves to be + "A remedy worse than the disease." +Though strong as ever, should once my strength +Give way, I must fall a fearful length. +</pre> +<pre> +My doctors say they know the cause, + And they've gone to work with eager zest, +Probed and expounded with weighty straws, + And leeches attached to my troubled breast; +I fee them well, as attests my purse +But day after day I'm growing worse. +</pre> +<pre> +Though they have not yet touched the cause they knew, + And are wrangling over its direful flood, +They promise to build me better than new, + And stop the drain on my famished blood; +But lest they're careful while building the dam +They'll scoop out a grave for "Uncle Sam." +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + NAY, DO NOT ASK. +</h2> +<pre> +Nay, do not ask me, Sweet, if I have loved before, + Or if, mayhap, in other years to be, +A younger, fairer face than thine I know, + I'll love her more than thee. +</pre> +<pre> +What should it matter if I've loved before, + So that I love thee now, and love thee best? +What matters it that I should love again + If, first, the daisy-buds blow o'er thy breast? +</pre> +<pre> +Love has the waywardness of strange caprice, + One can not chain it to a recreant heart, +Nor, when around the soul its tendrils twine, + Can will the clinging, silken bonds to part. +</pre> +<pre> +It is enough, I hold thee prisoned in my arms, + And drink the dewy fragrance of thy breath; +And earth, and heaven, and hades, are forgot, + And love holds carnival, and laughs at death. +</pre> +<pre> +Then do not ask me, Sweet, if I have loved before, + Or if some day my heart might turn from thee; +In this brief hour, thou hast my soul of love, + And thou are Is, and Was, and May be—all to me. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + A PICTURE. +</h2> +<pre> +A little maid, with sweet brown eyes, +Upraised to mine in sad surprise; +I held two tiny hands in mine, + I kissed the little maid farewell. +Her cheeks to deeper crimson flushed, + The sweet, shy glances downward fell; +From rosy lips came—ah! so low— + "I love you, do not go!" +</pre> +<pre> +I see it through the lapse of years— +This picture, ofttimes blurred with tears. +No tiny hands in mine are held, + No sweet brown eyes my pulses wake— +Only in memory a voice + E'er bids me stay for love's sweet sake. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + HANG UP YOUR STOCKING. +</h2> +<pre> +Laugh, little bright-eyes, hang up your stocking; + Don't count the days any more; +Old Santa Claus will soon be knocking, + Knocking, + Knocking at the door. +</pre> +<p> +Through the key-hole slyly peeping, +Down the chimney careful creeping, +When the little folks are sleeping, +Comes he with his pack of presents. +Such a grin! but then so pleasant +You would never think to fear him; +And you can not, must not hear him. +He's so particular, you know, +He'd just pick up his traps and go +If but one little eye should peep +That he thought was fast asleep. +Searching broomstick, nails, and shelf, +Till he finds the little stocking— +Softly lest you hear his knocking— +Smiling, chuckling to himself, +He fills it from his Christmas store, +And out he slips to hunt for more. +</p> +<pre> +Then laugh, little bright-eyes, and hang up your stocking; + Don't count the days any more; +Old Santa Claus will soon be knocking, + Knocking, + Knocking at the door. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + OPENING THE GATE FOR PAPA. +</h2> +<pre> +Hurrying out to the gateway + Go two little pattering feet; +Eagerly out through the palings + Peer two eyes bright and sweet. +</pre> +<pre> +A footstep as eager is answering + The sweet eyes that patiently wait +And papa is kissing, and blessing + The baby that opens the gate. +</pre> +<pre> +And every day all the long Summer, + At noontime and evening late, +The little one's watching for papa— + Waiting to open the gate. +</pre> +<pre> +And now the bright Summer is ended, + And Autumn's gay mantle unrolled; +The maple leaves wooing the breezes + Are gorgeous in crimson and gold. +</pre> +<pre> +At noonday the face at the gateway + Is flushed with a feverish glow, +At night the bright head on the pillow + Is tossing in pain to and fro. +</pre> +<pre> +The father kneels down in his anguish, + And stifles the sobs with groan; +He knows that his idol is going— + Going out in the midnight alone. +</pre> +<pre> +He buries his face in the pillow, + Close, close, to the fast failing breath; +A little arm clasps his neck closely, + A voice growing husky in death +</pre> +<pre> +Says pleadingly, half in a whisper: + "Please, darling papa, don't cry; +I know Birdie's going to Heaven— + I heard doctor say he will die; +</pre> +<pre> +"But I'll ask God for one of the windows + The pretty star-eyes look out through, +And when you come up with the angels + I'll sure be the first to see you. +</pre> +<pre> +"And maybe I'll find my dear mamma; + And you'll come up, too, by-and-by, +And Birdie will watch for you, papa, + And open the gate of the sky." +</pre> +<pre> +The little hand falls from his shoulder + All nerveless, the blue eyes dilate, +A shuddering sigh, then the baby + Is waiting to open the gate. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + WHITE HONEYSUCKLE +</h2> +<pre> +White honeysuckle, "bond of love," + Emblem born in Orient bowers, +Whence mythic Deities have wooed, + And told the soul's desire in flowers. +As sweet thy breath as Eden's balm, + As sweet and pure. Methinks that erst +Thy flower was of our earth a part, + Some angel hand the seed immersed +In fragrance of the lotus' heart, + And dropped it from the realm of calm. +And life of earth, and life above, + Thou bindest with they "bond of love." +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + ESTRANGEMENT. +</h2> +<pre> +Only a "something light as air," + Which never words could tell, +Yet feel you that between your lives + A cloud has strangely fell; +Though never a change in look or tone, + A change your heart is grieving; +You sentient feel the friend you love + Has deemed you are deceiving. +</pre> +<pre> +A promise rashly given has bound + Your lips the truth to screen, +The nameless something gathers fast + As mist the hills between; +You wrap you in your cloak of pride, + The words are never spoken +That might have thrown the portal wide, + And friendship's tie is broken. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + BRING FLOWERS. +</h2> +<pre> +Bring flowers, bring flowers, thou Queen of the Spring, + Sweet flowers to garland the earth, +Exotics to bloom in the mansions of wealth, + Wild flowers for the lowly hearth. + Bring flowers for the brave and strong-hearted, + Bring flowers for the merry and glad, + Bring flowers for the weak and despairing, + Bring flowers for the weary and sad. +</pre> +<pre> +Bring flowers, bring flowers, thou Queen of the Spring, + Sweet flowers, the dark hours to cheer. +Bring flowers for the little ones, flowers for the aged, + Bring flowers for the bridal and bier. + In this beautiful, sun-lighted Springtime, + Bring flowers their fragrance to shed, + To brighten the homes of the living, + To garnish the graves of the dead. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + GOOD-BYE. +</h2> +<pre> + Good-bye! Good-bye! +Once pledged we fondly o'er and o'er +That nought should cloud our love's bright sky; +Once thought we that we could not stay +Apart and live. But oh! For us +Fate willed it not to linger thus. +To-day earth's wintry poles apart +Are further not that we in heart, +Nor colder than our sunless way. +Passion and pride can do no more, +And you and I can only say + Good-bye! Good-bye! + + Good-bye! Good-bye! +So sad it seems the sound of tears, +So sad it seems life's parting sigh, +And yet, alas! It can but be. +Deserted ghostly wrecks of +Once freighted with Hope's golden gleams, +Wrecks drifting on a sullen sea, +To mock the memory-haunted years, +Are all now left to you and me. + Good-bye! Good-bye! +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + IN THE TWILIGHT. +</h2> +<pre> +In the twilight gray and shadowy, + Deepening o'er the sunset's glow, +Softly through the mystic dimness + Flitting shadows come and go. +</pre> +<pre> +As my thoughts in listless wandering + With these phantom shadows fly, +Meseems they wear the forms of faces, + Faces loved in days gone by. +</pre> +<pre> +One by one I recognize them + As they silent gather near; +Some are loving, childish faces, + Knowing naught of grief or care. +</pre> +<pre> +Some are blooming, youthful faces, + Victory confident to win, +Some are from the contest shrinking, + Wearied with the strife and din. +</pre> +<pre> +Some are aged, wrinkled faces, + Time life's sands has nearly run; +Not a leaflet spared of Springtime, + Not a furrow left undone. +</pre> +<pre> +Other faces, sweet, sad faces, + Wafted o'er the Lethean sea, +Radiant smile in twilight shadows, + But they came not back to me. +</pre> +<pre> +In the twilight, dreamy twilight, + When the sultry day is gone, +Quietly o'er vale and hillside, + Tenderly as blush of dawn, +</pre> +<pre> +Come the timid evening breezes, + Sighing through the Summer leaves, +Transient as thought's pencil-paintings, + Sweet as weft that fancy weaves. +</pre> +<pre> +And as shadows in the twilight + Shapeful forms of faces wear, +So these dainty, light-winged zephyrs, + To my hearing, voices are. +</pre> +<pre> +Voices whose sad intonations + Seemingly, as flit they past, +Bring to memory hopes long shattered, + Blissful dreams too bright to last. +</pre> +<pre> +Voices, merry laughing voices, + Fondly loved in other years, +Mournfully are whispering to me + That their mirth was drowned in tears. +</pre> +<pre> +Telling of a fairer fortune + Far away 'neath tropic skies, +Telling of a broken circle, + Scattered friends and severed ties. +</pre> +<pre> +Other kindly, loving voices, + Winning in the long ago, +Tell me now, as then they told me, + "Thou canst live for weal or woe." +</pre> +<pre> +Are these weird and mystic voices + But creations of the brain? +Only in illusive fancy + Must I hear their tones again? +</pre> +<pre> +Would some magic power lend me + Aid to stay the witching tone, +Art to pain the beauteous picture + Ere its impress swift has flown. +</pre> +<hr> +<pre> +While I dreamed the day has faded, + Stars are shining overhead, +Evening winds have ceased to whisper, + Twilight's shadows all have fled. +</pre> +<pre> +Thus, too oft, our life-work seemeth, + And we, when disowned its sway, +Find we are pursuing phantoms, + Shadows in the twilight gray. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + HOME. +</h2> +<p> +"How many times and oft" has the sweet, sweet word been sung in song and +told in story. And he sang sweetest of home, who had never a home on +earth. If one to whom home was only a poet's dream, could portray its +charms by only imagination, until a million hearts thrilled with +responsive echo, how deeper, how more intense must be his longings and +recollections who treasures, deep down in his heart the sweet delights +and pure associations that he has known, but never may know again. We do +not appreciate our blessings until they have passed. We do not try to +gather the sunbeams until the clouds have obscured them. +</p> +<p> +How many and many a youth, brave-hearted and true, answers with eager +haste the war call of his native land all heedless of the home he is +leaving, and the loving arms that sheltered him there. But when his +soldier's blood is crimsoning the sands beneath a foreign sky, the +thoughts that go with his ebbing life are of home—all of home. +</p> +<p> +Who rushes from his home out into the world, blind devotee of fortune's +phantom goddess, to realize a phantom indeed, sits down in his +despondency and his despair, to dream of "dear old home". +</p> +<p> +Yes, too, and the wretch—so seemingly depraved that nothing beautiful +or pure of soul is left—who flings from him his life in mad suicide, +goes out into that trackless eternity with home upon the lips of death. +Then if the patter of baby's feet, the glad ring of children's voices +echo within the walls of your home, if father and mother; and brothers +and sisters brighten it with the sunshine of love, enjoy it while you +may, make it your heaven, and be not in over-haste to break the ties +that bind you there. +</p> +<p> +You may never weep, perchance, over a home made desolate by death; and +yet, time—so surely as time is—will make it but only a memory. And all +too late each heart will learn that it did not prize enough the +blessedness of home. +</p> +<a name="2H_4_0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + WHY? +</h2> +<pre> +Why is it we grasp at the shadow + That flits from us swift as thought, +While the real that maketh the shadow + Stands in our way unsought? +And why do we wonder, and wonder, + What's beyond the hill-tops of thought? +</pre> +<pre> +Why is it the things that we sigh for + Are the things that we never can reach? +Why, only the sternest experience + A lesson of patience can teach? +And why hold we so careless and lightly + The treasures that are in our reach? +</pre> +<pre> +Why is it we wait for the future, + Or dwell on the scenes of the past, +Rather than live in the present + Hastening from us so fast? +Why is it the prizes we toil for, + So tempting in fancy's mould cast, +Prove, when to our lips we have pressed them, + Only dead-sea apples at last? +And why are the crowns, and the crosses, + So wondrous inequally classed? +</pre> +<pre> +Ask it, ye, over and over, + Let the winds waft your question on high, +Till memory wanes with the ages, + Till the stars in eternity die. +And out from the bloom and the sunshine, + From the rainbow o'erarching the sky, +From the night and the gloom and the tempest, + Echo will answer you, "Why?" +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + OUT IN THE COLD. +</h2> +<h3> + Suggested by reading, "Lights and Shades" in San Francisco. +</h3> +<pre> +Out from a narrow, crowded street, +Sick'ning resort of shame and crime, + Wearing upon her brow a curse, +Out in the darkness, lost to sight, +Out in the dreary Winter night, + Fleeing a fate than Nessus worse. +On through the gathering mist and dew +'Till the fog-wrapped city is hid from view; + 'Till the rugged cliffs with the waters meet, +And the mingled voices from every clime + And the hurrying tramp of reckless feet +Are drowned in the breakers' sobbing rhyme. +But farther out than this ocean beach, +Farther than Charity's hands will reach, +Farther than Pity dares to come, +Is she who rushes, with white lips dumb, +To repeat the tale that too oft is told— + Out in the cold. +</pre> +<pre> +From the loathesome dens whose scenes appal, +Whose tainted breath's the Simoom's blast; + Away on the dizzying, surf-washed rock, +Pausing a moment upon the brink— +Pausing a moment perchance to think; + Sliding the bolt in Memory's lock, +And back in its dusty, haunted hall, +Living again the vanished past— +Living her happy childhood o'er; + Chasing the butterflies over the flowers, +Petted and loved, a girl again, + Dreaming away the golden hours; +Living again another scene, +Flattered and toasted "beauty's queen;" +Taking again, with a merry laugh, +From gallant hands a sparkling draught. +O, angels, tell her 'tis a draught of woe! +That ruin lies in its amber glow. +Over the rest let oblivion fall, +Cover it up with a funeral pall; +Turn away with a shudder and groan, +Let her live it over alone. +Few are the months, as they count, since then; +Short and joyous they else had been +That to anguished heart and maddened brain +Are long decades of woe and pain. +Over, again, on the wings of thought, +Treading the path which her ruin wrought; +Over again each step she went, +From the sunny home to the swift descent, +Where sin lies hidden 'neath a gilded pile, +Down to the haunts of the low and vile. +One more step and it all is done. + Only a shriek the midnight breaks— +Only a splash in the waves below, + A wider ripple the water makes. +The rock is bare by the ocean side— +A death-white face with the ebbing tide +Is floating away from the headland bold— + Out in the cold. +</pre> +<pre> +A lifeless form, in the wintry dawn, + Left on the sand by a rising swell; +A story of weakness, shame, and wrong + Mutely the frozen features tell. +Noiseless falls on it, the tears of dew, + Over it softly the breezes blow; +Wavelets, kissing the tangled hair, + Murmur a requiem sad and low. +Out to the barren, bleak hillside + Rough hands bear it with scorn and jest. +Cradled once in a mother's arms— + Once by a mother's fond lips pressed— +Under the clods of a new-made grave; + A rough-hewn board at the foot and head, +Where never a flower of love shall wave; + Left with the city's nameless dead— +Left with her fate unwept, untold— + Out in the cold. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + TO JENNIE. +</h2> +<pre> +Farewell my darling, fare thee well, + Life hence has only dearth; +With thee it were too sweet a dream— + Too much Heaven, for earth. +Thou dost not know the depth of pain + This parting gives to me, +Nor how, as time drags weary on, + My soul will sigh for thee. +</pre> +<pre> +Each loved one that thou leavest here, + Some other love may wear, +Each heart will have some other heart + Its loneliness to share. +But I have nothing, darling, left— + You're all the world to me— +And only God and Heaven can know + The love I give to thee. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + WATCHING THE SHADOWS. +</h2> +<pre> +Watching the shadows, the fire-light shadows, + That gather and play on the wall; +Dark, flitting shadows, fanciful shadows, + That gather and rise and fall. +Reading the fire shadows' language of shadows, + Pages of darkness and light— + Watching, watching, + Watching the shadows to-night. +</pre> +<pre> +Watching the shadows, the fire-light shadows, + That over the wall fitful play; +Dreaming of shadows, dreaming of shadows, + Deep darker shadows than they. +Heart-shading shadows, soul-darkening shadows, + Flitting in memory's light— + Dreaming, dreaming, +Watching the shadows to-night. +</pre> +<pre> +Watching the shadows, the fire-light shadows, + Merrily dancing about, +Wondering if heart-shadows vanish like shadows, + When life's fitful flame has gone out; +Wondering if shadows are deep, darker shadows, + Aeons of ages of blight; + Wondering, wondering, + Watching the shadows to-night. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + I GIVE THEE BACK THY HEART. +</h2> +<pre> +I give thee back thy fickle heart, + Thy faithless vows I've spurned, +I bury deep the blighted hopes + That in my bosom burned. +</pre> +<pre> +Yet who had thought a brow so fair, + From guile so seeming free, +A voice so sweet, so winning rare, + So treacherous could be? +</pre> +<pre> +Who would have dreamed a form that seemed + Proud Honor's templed shrine, +Could hold within an urn of sin + A soul so false as thine? +</pre> +<pre> +Nor strange 'twould be, if ne'er again, + Till age had wasted youth, +That heart betrayed by such as thou, + Could trust in human truth. +</pre> +<pre> +But go! and though thy wiles no more + Will move my heart to strife, +Canst glad thy vain soul with the thought + That thou hast wrecked a life. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + LIGHT BEYOND. +</h2> +<pre> +Is your heart bowed down with sorrow; + Does your lot the hardest seem; +Think you of a brighter morrow, + Of a fairer future dream. +</pre> +<pre> +Have your prospects all been blighted; + Has each promise proved a snare; +Deepest wrongs are sometime righted, + Never yield you to despair. +</pre> +<pre> +Has the slanderer's tongue unsparing + Ruthless tarnished with its stain; +Was your good name worth the wearing— + Go and win it back again. +</pre> +<pre> +Would you rest where sunshine lingers; + You must toil the darkness through; +Only work with willing fingers, + Only live you brave and true. +</pre> +<pre> +Never care or trouble borrow, + "Trouble's real if it seems"— +Ever see a bright to-morrow, + Though you see it but in dreams. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0027"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + A NEGLECTED "WOMAN'S RIGHT." +</h2> +<p> +I have listened to this cry of "Woman's Rights," this clamoring for the +ballot, for redress for woman's wrongs, and I could but think, amid it +all, that there is one "woman's right"—the right that could make the +widest redress for woman's wrongs—which she holds in her own hands and +does not exercise. It is the right to defend, to uplift and ennoble +womankind; to be as lenient to a plea for mercy from a fallen woman as +though that plea had come from the lips of a fallen man; to throw around +her also the broad mantle of charity, and if she would try to reform, +give her a chance. Far be it from any honest woman to countenance the +abandoned wretch who plies an unholy calling in defiance of all +morality, for her very breath is contamination; but why should you greet +with smiles and warmest handclasps of friendship the man who pays his +money for her blackened soul? When two human beings ruled by the same +mysterious nature, have yielded to temptations and fallen, what is this +monster of social distinction that excuses the sin of one as a folly or +indiscretion, while it makes that of the other a crime, which a lifetime +cannot retrieve? It is a strange justice that condones the fault of one +while it condemns the other even to death; that gives to one, when dead, +funeral rite and Christian burial and to the other the Morgue and a +dishonored grave, simply because one is a strong man and the other a +weak woman. And it is a stranger, sadder truth that 'tis woman's +influence which metes out this justice to woman. Mother, if you must +look with scorn and contempt upon the woman who through her love for +some man has gone down to destruction, do not smilingly acknowledge her +paramour a worthy suitor for your own unsullied daughter. Maiden, if you +must sneeringly raise your white hand and push back into the depths of +pollution the woman who seeks to reinstate herself in the path of +rectitude, do not permit the man who keeps half a dozen mistresses to +clasp his arm around your waist and whirl you away to the soft measure +of the "Beautiful Blue Danube." If the ban of society forbids that you +say to a penitent sin-sick sister, "Go and sin no more," if you must +consign her to the life of infamy which inevitably follows the deaf ear +which you turn upon her appeal, then do it; but in God's name do not +turn around and throw open the doors of your homes and welcome to the +sanctity of your family altars the man who enticed her to ruin. Ah, +woman, by your tireless efforts you may win the right to vote, your +voice may be heard in the Assembly Halls of the Nation; but if you +administer as one-sided a justice in political life as you do in social +life, the reform for which you pray will never come! +</p> +<a name="2H_4_0028"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + WOULD YOU CARE? +</h2> +<pre> +All day on my pillow I wearily lay, + With a stabbing pain at my heart, +With throbbing temples, and a feverish thirst + Burning, my lips apart. +If I longed for a touch of your soft, strong hand, + For you one little minute there; +For a smile, or a kiss, or a word to bless, + Would you blame me, love?—would you care? +</pre> +<pre> +When the long, long, lonesome day was done, + And you never for a moment came, +If I tried to shut you out of my heart, + Impatient at your name; +If disappointment's bitter sting + Was harder than pain to bear, +If I turned away with a doubting frown, + Would you blame me, love?—would you care? +</pre> +<pre> +Should I die to-night, and you saw me not + Again till my soul had fled +With its vain request, and my features wore + The white hue of the dead— +Would you place just once, in a last caress, + Your hand on my death-damp hair? +Would you give me a thought, or a fond regret? + Would you kiss me, love?—would you care? +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0029"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + A THOUGHT OF HEAVEN. +</h2> +<pre> +Friend of my heart, you say to me + That your belief is this— +The heaven is but a vision rare + Of pure, ethereal bliss. +</pre> +<pre> +And life there but a dream enhanced, + Where never sound alarms; +Where flowers ne'er fade and skies ne'er cloud, + And voiceless music charms— +</pre> +<pre> +And save as see we in our dreams + The dear ones gone before, +The friends that here we knew and loved, + We'll know and love no more. +</pre> +<pre> +An endless and unbroken rest, + Nor change, nor night, nor day, +Where aimless, as in sleep, we'll dream + Eternity away. +</pre> +<pre> +Sweet friend of mine, that Heaven of thine + Methinks if overblest; +We could not work on earth enough + To need so long a rest. +</pre> +<pre> +Our human nature could not be + Content with rest like this, +And even bliss could cloy, if we + Had nothing else but bliss. +</pre> +<pre> +Great Nature's hand, in every plan, + Had laid in wise design, +But what design, or use, is in + This theory of thine? +</pre> +<pre> +If, when our earth-career is done, + All conscious life must cease, +And we drift on, and on, and on, + In endless, dreamy peace— +</pre> +<pre> +If Heaven is but a mystic spell, + Whose glowing visions thrall, +Why should we have a life beyond? + Why have a Heaven at all? +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0030"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CONSOLANCE. +</h2> +<pre> +"Be brave?" why, yes, I will; I'll never more despair; + Who could, with such sweet comforting as yours? +How, like the voice that stilled the tempest air, + Your mild philosophy its reasoning pours. +</pre> +<pre> +Go you and build a temple to the skies, and make + Your soul an alter-offering on the pile; +Then, from its lightning-riven ruin, take + Your crushed and bleeding self, and calmly smile. +</pre> +<pre> +When loud, and fierce, and wild, a storm sweeps o'er your rest, + Say that it soothes you—brings you peace again; +Laugh while the hot steel quivers in your breast, + And "make believe" you love the scorching pain. +</pre> +<pre> +See every earthly thing your life is woven round, + Fall, drop by drop, until your heart is sieved! +Go mad and writhe, and moan upon the ground, + And curse, and die, and say that you have prayed and lived! +</pre> +<pre> +Then come to me, as now, and I will take your hand, + And look upon your face and smile and say: +"All were not born to hold a magic wand; + Cheer up, my friend, you must be brave always." +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0031"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + WHEN THE ROSES GO. +</h2> +<pre> +You tell me you love me; you bid me believe +That never such lover could mean to deceive. +You tell me the tale which a million times +Has been told, and talked, and sung in rhymes; +You rave o'er my "eyes" and my "beautiful hair," +And swear to be true, as they always swear; +But the wrinkles will grow, and the roses go, +And lovers are rovers oft, you know, + When the roses go. +</pre> +<pre> +I have heard of a woman, sweet and fair, +With dewy lips and shining hair, +And you pledged to her, on your bended knee, +The self-same vow you make to me. +She was fairer than I, I know; +She was pure and true, and she loved you so; +But the wrinkles will grow and the roses go— +How she learned that trouble comes, you know, + When the roses go. +</pre> +<pre> +You're a man in each outward sense, I trow, +With the stamp of a god on your peerless brow. +You hold my hand in your thrilling clasp, +And my heart grows weak in your subtle grasp, +Till I blush in the light of your tender eyes, +And dream of a far-of paradise— +Almost forgetting that ever from there +Another was turned in her bleak despair. +But the wrinkles will grow, and the roses go— +I will answer you, love, my love, you know, + When the roses go. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0032"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + THE DIFFERENCE. +</h2> +<pre> +With odds all against him, struggling to gain, +From fortune a name, with life to maintain, +Toiling in sunshine, toiling in rain, +Never waiting a blessing Heaven-sent, +Working and winning his way as he went— +Whether he starved, or sumptuously fared, +Nobody knew and nobody cared. +</pre> +<pre> +With success-crowned effort that fate had defied, +That wrought out from fortune what favor denied, +Standing aloof from the world in his pride; +The niche he has carved on fame's slippery wall +Friends are proclaiming with heraldry-call. +His Croesus-bright scepter has magical sway, +Yester's indifference solicits to-day. +His daring his triumph, how daily he fares, +Every one knows, and anxiously cares. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0033"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + BEWARE. +</h2> +<pre> +Beautiful maiden, + So daintily fair, +Thy rose-hued lips, + Thy soft, flowing hair, +Symmetric perfection, + Sweet, winning face, +The charms that thou wearest + A palace might grace; +And yet thy bright beauty + May wreck and despair. +Beautiful maiden, + Beware! oh, beware! +</pre> +<pre> +There are flattering tongues + That 'twere death to believe, +And loves who woo + But to win and deceive; +For innocent feet + There is many a snare. +Beautiful maiden, + Beware! oh, beware! +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0034"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + A REGRET. +</h2> +<pre> +Close on my heart was resting + A sunny golden head, +As the dim gray of the twilight + Crept round with noiseless tread. +</pre> +<pre> +"Tell me a 'tory, mamma," + The blue-eyed baby said, +"About some itty birdie + In za itty birdie bed. +</pre> +<pre> +"'Bout fen oo was itty + An'ze mens was walkin' hay +An' found free ittie birdies + Wiz za muzzer don away." +</pre> +<pre> +"Some other time, my darling; + Mamma's tired now." +A shade of disappointment + Swept over the baby's brow. +</pre> +<pre> +The dear blue eyes grew misty; + O, lips that lived to blame, +That kissed and whispered "sometime"— + That "sometime" never came. +</pre> +<pre> +Again, the dim, gray twilight + Creeps round with noiseless tread, +But on my heart is resting + No sunny golden head. +</pre> +<pre> +No sweet voice pleads with mamma + "Tell me a 'tory" now, +And only death can take away + The shadow on my brow. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0035"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + "IT IS LIFE TO DIE." +</h2> +<pre> +"It is life to die," the muse has sung, + The prophet words have rung from pole to pole, +The trust, the hope to which many have clung, + An echo woke in many a weary soul. +</pre> +<pre> +"Ah! welcome thrice if but that death would come + As sweeps the avalanche from Alpine hight, +As falls the flashing storm-sent lightning-bolt, + Resistless in its terror and its might. +</pre> +<pre> +"But oh! to die by slowest slow decay, + To clothe a dying heart in life's warm breath, +When every day repeats a long eternity, + And every hour is but another death!" +</pre> +<pre> +O, God! why were we born to live a life, + From very thought of which our souls must shrink, +To sink down in the waves of human strife, + And ever only wait, and wait, and think. +</pre> +<pre> +No wonder that so many hapless ones, + Too sensitive the specter to defy, +Arm, Hamlet-like, against a sea of woes, + And test the truth, that "it is life to die." +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0036"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + O, SPEAK IT NOT. +</h2> +<pre> +O, speak not hastily the word + Thine ear from idle tongues has heard. +If false the tale thou couldst recall, + How hard, and cruel must it fall? +If true, why, helping it along + Will never, never right the wrong. +O, speak it not, not speak the word + That wounds, though but in jest 'tis heard; +Keep back the thrust, the look askance, + The petty doubt, the sneering glance; +Keep back the taunts and jeers, + Life has enough of breaking hearts, +Of pointed barbs and venomed darts— + Enough of pain and tears. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0037"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + A SHATTERED IDOL. +</h2> +<pre> +O blame me not for the cruel words + In a moment of madness said; +The shadow that fell upon my life + Is cold as the shrouded dead. +Deem not I am hard and heartless; + My tears are as warm as thine; +'Twas clay that I crowned and worshipped, + And wept o'er its crumbled shrine. +</pre> +<pre> +To me, my passionate, deathless soul, + Was less than his finger-tips; +He turned away fro the gold of my love + For the dross on a wanton's lips. +My faith in his truth is broken— + Even truth itself is a lie. +I have cursed him!—but I love him, + And I'll love him till I die. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0038"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + POOR LITTLE JOE. +</h2> +<pre> +A ring on the door bell, + Some one at the door, +Mute asking admittance + Where never before +A stranger in midnight, + In silence and stealth, +Sought access to gain + In a mansion of wealth. +Into the gaslight + A package is borne; +Quickly from round it + The wrappings are torn. +What is it? a baby! + What seek you to-night, +So rosy and smiling, + Nor in fear, nor in fright? +</pre> +<pre> +Ah! little intruder, + What is it you wear +So close to your breast? + Sure but hand in despair +Could have written the message + Unconscious you bear, +And "loved" and "God blessed" you + While leaving you there. +Let's see the story + 'Tis telling for you; +How brief and pathetic; + But can it be true? +A mother heart brokenly + Praying in grief +From hand of a stranger + Her baby's relief. +"He's helpless and homeless, + But stainless as snow; +O, take him and keep him— + My poor little Joe." +</pre> +<pre> +That's all there is of it, + If false or if true; +Yet long enough seems it, + And sad enough, too. +No love-welcomed greeted + The sweet baby face, +In the life that gave his life + There was not a place. +No place for the baby, + There's none for him here, +No heart that may give him + A smile or a tear. +Off to the refuge, + For such, he must go, +He's only a foundling— + Poor little Joe. +</pre> +<pre> +Deserted, forsaken, + Thrust out in the strife, +Adrift on the pitiless + Ocean of life. +What will become of him, + Who may decide +If good or if evil + His life shall betide. +No tender caresses + Ever to know, +Nor guidance, nor blessing— + Poor little Joe. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0039"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + FATE. +</h2> +<pre> +Ruth was a laughing-eyed prattler, + Thoughtless, and happy, and free; +She planted a seed in the garden, + And said: "It will grow to a tree— + A beautiful blossoming tree." +</pre> +<pre> +The birds and the squirrels played round it, + As careless and merry was she, +But not tree ever grew from her planting— + No beautiful blossoming tree. +</pre> +<pre> +Ruth was a winsome-faced maiden, + Happy, and hopeful, and free; +She planted a seed in the garden, + And smilingly waited to see— + A beautiful blossoming tree. +</pre> +<pre> +She covered the ground up with flowers, + The butterfly came, and the bee, +But no tree ever grew from her planting— + No beautiful blossoming tree. +</pre> +<pre> +Ruth was a pale saddened woman, + Thoughtful, with tremblings and fears, +She planted a seed in the garden, + And watered the place with her tears— + And watched it with tremblings and fears. +</pre> +<pre> +The winds and the rains beat upon it, + The lightnings flashed o'er it in glee; +But she sleeps 'neath the tree of her planting— + A beautiful blossoming tree. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0040"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + THE GHOSTS IN THE HEART. +</h2> +<pre> +They came in the hush of the midnight, + In the glare of the noonday start +Out from the graves we made them— + The graves we made in the heart. +</pre> +<pre> +There is love with its fickle fancies; + Its grave was so wide and deep, +And we heaped the mound with oblivion, + But the soul of love could not sleep. +</pre> +<pre> +And hate! ah, we buried it deeper + Than all the rest of the train; +But one word through memory flashing, + And its ghost comes back again. +</pre> +<pre> +There are phantoms of sunshiny hours + That fled when the summer time fled, +And specters that mock while they haunt us, + Long buried, but never dead. +</pre> +<pre> +And ever and ever an hour + Will come that the heart-wraiths control, +Till down from Eternity's tower + A banshee shall ring for the soul. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0041"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + ONLY A TRAMP. +</h2> +<pre> +Only a tramp by the roadside dead, + Only a tramp—who cares? +His feet are bare, his dull eyes stare, + And the wind plays freaks with his unkempt hair. +The sun rose up and the sun went down, + But nobody missed him from the town +Where he begged for bread 'till the day he was dead. + He's only a tramp—who cares? +Only a tramp, a nuisance gone. + One more tramp less—who cares? + + Ghastly and gray, in the lane all day, +A soiled, dead heap of human clay. + Would the wasted crumbs in the rich man's hall, +Where the gas-lights gleam and the curtains fall, + Have given him a longer lease of breath— +Have saved the wretch from starving to death? + He's only a tramp—who cares? +</pre> +<pre> +Only a tramp! was he ever more + Than a beggar tramp? Who cares? +Was the hard-lined face ever dimpled and sweet? + Has a mother kissed those rough brown feet, +And thought their tramping a sweeter strain + Than ever will waken his ear again? +Does somebody kneel 'way over the sea, + Praying "Father, bring back my boy to me?" +Does somebody watch and weep and pray + For the tramp who lies dead in the lane to-day? + He's only a tramp—who cares? +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0042"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + PUT FLOWERS ON MY GRAVE. +</h2> +<pre> +When dead, no imposing funeral rite, + Nor line of praise I crave; +But drop your tears upon my face— + Put flowers on my grave. +</pre> +<pre> +Close not in narrow wall the place + In which my heart finds rest, +Nor mark with tow'ring monument + The sod above my breast. +</pre> +<pre> +Nor carve on gleaming, marble slab + A burning thought or deed, +Or word of love, or praise, or blame, + For stranger eyes to read. +</pre> +<pre> +But deep, deep in your heart of hearts, + A tender mem'ry save; +Upon my dead face drop your tears— + Put flowers on my grave. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0043"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + OLD AUNT LUCY. +</h2> +<pre> +Why into that darkened chamber + Walk you with such noiseless tread? +No slumbering one will awaken— + The sheeted form is dead. +</pre> +<pre> +Why gaze on the rigid features, + So white in death's embrace, +With such look of awe and pity? + 'Tis only the same old face. +</pre> +<pre> +Why touch you now so tender + The hands that silent lay? +They're only the sunburned fingers + That toiled for you night and day. +</pre> +<pre> +Why now, with your tear-dimmed vision, + So softly do you press +Upon the wrinkled forehead + Your lips in sad caress? +</pre> +<pre> +How much of care had lighted + That lingering, loving kiss, +Had you in life but gave it— + You never thought of this. +</pre> +<pre> +No loving hand e'er brightened + Her life with tender care, +No mother's baby-kisses + Were ever hers to share. +</pre> +<pre> +Only for others caring, + The long, long years have fled; +Now, only, they say,—the neighbors— + "Poor old Aunt Lucy's dead." +</pre> +<pre> +And they whisper a girl's ambition, + A name in the world to make; +'Way back in her vanished youth-time, + Gave up for a duty's sake. +</pre> +<pre> +But whatever had been the story + Of love, or grief, or woe, +It died with the heart, and no one + Will ever care or know. +</pre> +<pre> +The hands were hard and toil-stained, + And sallow the cheeks and chin, +But whiter not the snow-wreath + Than the soul that dwelt within. +</pre> +<pre> +And methinks a crown resplendent— + Just over the waveless sea— +With gems of self-denial, + Awaits for such as she. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0044"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + UNSPOKEN WORDS. +</h2> +<pre> +Unspoken words may thrill the heart, + Their meaning be more deeply felt +Than all the glowing oratory + Poured at the shrine where reason knelt. +The fairest pictures art conceives, + The noblest sentiments of mind, +The loveliest, purest gems of thought + Are those which never are defined. +</pre> +<pre> +The hand that paints the rainbow dyes + Ne'er leaves a trace its skill to show— +The art that gilds the sunset skies + And tints the flower, we may not know. +Nor may we know the wizard power + Which o'er our being wields control, +Nor how, when silence seals the lips, + Heart speaks to heart and soul to soul. +</pre> +<pre> +We do not know from whence the life + Imbued in crystal drop of rain, +Nor why, when torn and trampled on, + The rose's fragrance will remain. +Nor know we why the tender tone + Will linger when love's dream is fled, +Now why the smile we loved will live, + Although the face it wreathed will be dead. +</pre> +<pre> +Some strangely fascinating spell + Steals o'er the heart in ethic's hour; +We know not what, nor how, nor why, + Still must we own we feel its power— +A power that wakens slumbering dreams, + Intangible emotion swells, +That penetrates the soul's deep fount, + And greets the tide that from it wells. +</pre> +<pre> +It is not charm of form or face, + Nor is it long contact of years +That wins this mutual soul response, + This spirit sympathy endears. +A theory by time engraved + Fro life, one mad impulse may sweep— +A glance may into being start + Vain hopes that nevermore may sleep. +</pre> +<pre> +The quiet touch when hands are clasped + Would seemingly no sense impart, +Yet may it wake a deathless theme + And send it quivering to the heart. +And thus may kindred spirits feel, + Though tone of voice be never heard, +The sweet impassioned eloquence, + The magic of unspoken words. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0045"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + O! TAKE AWAY YOUR FLOWERS. +</h2> +<pre> +O! take your pale camellias back; + Their soft leaves, waxen white +And odorless, too ill accord + With my dark mood to-night. +</pre> +<pre> +I do not want your hot-house flowers, + They're like the love you give— +A something tame and passionless + That breaths but does not live. +</pre> +<pre> +You take my hand as though you feared + Your clasp were over-bold, +Your kiss falls light at flake of snow, + And just as calm and cold. +</pre> +<pre> +I'd rather have your hatred + Than this lifeless loving claim, +If your heart beat one throb faster + At mention of my name. +</pre> +<pre> +Leave me, and bind those soulless leaves + A calmer brow above; +I cannot wear your flowers to-night— + I do not want your love. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0046"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + RAIN. +</h2> +<pre> + Drop! drop! drop! + With a ceaseless patter fall, +With a sobbing sound on the sodden ground, + And the gray clouds over all. +Dost weep of the parted summer, + O, spirit of the rain? +For the vanished hours and the faded flowers + That never can come again? +</pre> +<pre> +The farmer smiles at they weeping, + Hushing the whispering leaves, +And dreams of days in the Autumn haze + And the gathered golden sheaves. +There's a voice of hope, a promise, + In the sound of thy refrain, +And as bright the hours and as fair the flowers + That will come to thee again. +</pre> +<pre> +And yet in our lives, though knowing + That we hold a scepter's sway, +How oft we turn with the thoughts that burn, + To weep on Autumn day. +Turn from the hopeful future + To weep in grief and pain, +For the vanished hours and the faded flowers + That never can come again. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0047"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + I LOVE HIM FOR HIS EYES. +</h2> +<pre> +They praised the baby's dimpled hands, + His brow so broad and fair, +They kiss the dainty rose-bud mouth, + Caress the sunny hair. +His lisping words, his tottling steps, + His smiles they praise and prize, +They love him for his cunning ways, + I love him for his eyes. +</pre> +<pre> +The wealth of golden tinted curls + Old Time will streak with snow; +The rose-bud mouth so dainty curved + To sterner lines will grow. +The fleeting years will mark with change + Each feature now they prize, +Save only the sweet eyes I love— + I love him for his eyes. +</pre> +<pre> +Those wondrous, wondrous soulful eyes, + How strange the spell they fling +Unconsciously around my heart; + What memories they bring! +What buried hours come thronging back— + A distant, dearer clime— +Another pair of love-lit eyes, + Another summer time. +</pre> +<pre> +Oh, baby, take your eyes away: + They burn into my heart! +I'll kiss you once, and say good-by, + And hid the tears that start; +But through the years to come and go, + The changeful scenes to rise, +I'll love the little baby boy— + I love him for his eyes. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0048"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + ONLY. +</h2> +<pre> +Only a sentence earnest spoke, + With never a thought to word it, +Fell like balm from the sea of calm, + On the aching heart that heard it. +</pre> +<pre> +Only a glance, a scornful smile, + A wavering purpose altered, +Goaded a hand the crime to do + At which before it faltered. +</pre> +<pre> +Only a kiss, a love caress, + Tender and trustful given, +Banished a cloud from brow of care, + Made home a woman's Heaven. +</pre> +<pre> +Only a secret, chance disclosed, + Whence secret should be never, +A doubt crept into the heart that loved + And its light went out forever. +</pre> +<pre> +Only a prayer, a wrong confessed, + By suppliant lowly kneeling, +Opened the gate where the angels wait, + Life's Eden field revealing. +</pre> +<pre> +Careful then scatter the little things, + They make life drear and lonely, +Or strew its way with flowers gay,— + We live by trifles only. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0049"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + SOMEBODY'S BABY'S DEAD. +</h2> +<pre> +A hearse all draped in mourning, + With white plumes overhead, +Bearing a little coffin— + Somebody's baby's dead. +</pre> +<pre> +Upon the velvet cover + Some hand has placed a wreath, +White as the waxen features + Of the baby that lies beneath. +</pre> +<pre> +Out in the graveyard making + A rest for a shining head, +Somebody's heart is breaking, + Somebody's baby's dead. +</pre> +<pre> +Over a baby's coffin, + Heaping a mound of clay, +Somebody's hopes are buried + In that little grave to-day. +</pre> +<pre> +Somebody's home is dreary, + Somebody's sunshine fled, +Somebody's sad and weary, + Somebody's baby's dead. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0050"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + THE WITHERED ROSEBUD. +</h2> +<pre> +I gathered you, sweet little rosebud, + With a dew crown encircling your head; +Now, out of the window I toss you, + Shriveled, and scentless, and dead. +You had opened to wondrous perfection, + Had only my hand let you pass; +Yet here you have perished for water— + I forgot to put some in the glass. +</pre> +<pre> +Ah! poor little withered, dead rosebud, + How many a weak human heart, +Too like you, has famishing perished, + When life had but only a start? +Yes, many a heart, little rosebud, + Loving, and tender, and true, +For water has faded and withered, + And died in its beauty like you, +Not because there was dearth of life's fountain, + Nor the blessing to all might not pass, +But because the strong hand which it clung to + Forgot to put some in its glass. +</pre> +<a name="2H_4_0051"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + MY SHIPS HAVE COME FROM SEA. +</h2> +<pre> +You are watching a ship, O, maiden fair, +With parted lips and wistful air, +The ship that out from the sheltered bay +With white sails spread moves slow away; +And I know, my girl, the thoughts that burn +In your heart are of ship's return. +Ah! I know so well how your pulses beat, +With the great sea sobbing at your feet; +And the yellow stars in southern skies +Are brighter not than your love-bright eyes. +I, too, have stood on the sea-wet sand +And tearful waved a farewell hand, +And watched with many a longing prayer. +My face, like yours, was young and fair, +And my eyes were bright as the diamond's glow; +They've lost their sparkle—long ago. +I stand along on the beach to-day, +Watching the ships that sail away; +But never a sail from over the sea +The flowing tide will bring to me, + My ships have come from sea. +</pre> +<pre> +The first was builded with childish hand, +It floated away a castle grand— +A beautiful bubble with rainbow hues, +Lined with the crystal of morning dews; +To break at my feet by the sunny sea, +A beautiful bubble came back to me— + Came back from my ship at sea. +</pre> +<pre> +I fashioned another in gladsome way +And sent it forth on a Summer day. + I see it yet, a fairer craft, +Never at danger mocking laughed; +Its shrouds were the sheen of happy hours, +Its helm a wreath of orange flowrs; +And I freighted it down with love and truth, +The golden hopes of my sunny youth. +Had it lived the storm—but it could not be, +A stranded wreck on the surf-washed lea, + My ship came home from sea. +</pre> +<pre> +And then a smiling fairy bark, +A fragile, precious-freighted ark, +Out on life's ocean drear and dark. +And I prayed to God as I never before, +To shield this back from the tempest's roar, +To spare me this—but it could not be, +A tiny coffin came back to me— + Came back from my ship at sea. +</pre> +<pre> +With reckless hand I launched again, +A venture on the treacherous main, +Bound for ambition's dizzy court; +Sailed from a hopeless, loveless port; +With gloomy walls whose silence chilled, +With ghostly haunting memories filled, +With never a breath of the roses dead; +Never a rest for a weary head, +Never a dream of a sweet to be, +Hopeless, loveless still, to me, + My ship came home from sea. +</pre> +<pre> +The last, and least, of all the ships +Fashioned with hands, and heart, and lips, +I pushed from shore with its decks untrod +And the freight it bore was my faith in God. +I recked not whither its way, nor when, +Nor how, if ever, 'twould come again, +And this, alone, came back to me, +Rich-laden from the stormy sea. +And so, sweet maiden, while your dreams +Paint fairest all that fairest seems, +I stand with you and watch to-day +The ship that sails form the shore away; +But never a sail from over the sea +The flowing tide will bring to me— + My ships have come from sea. + My ships have come from sea. +</pre> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Debris, by Madge Morris + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEBRIS *** + +***** This file should be named 16108-h.htm or 16108-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/1/0/16108/ + +Produced by Michael Gray + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Debris + Selections from Poems + + +Author: Madge Morris + + + +Release Date: June 22, 2005 [eBook #16108] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEBRIS*** + + +E-text prepared by Michael Gray (Lost_Gamer@comcast.net) + + + +DEBRIS + +Selections from Poems + +by + +MADGE MORRIS + +Sacramento +H. S. Crocker & Co., Printers + +1881 + + + + + + + +_To the one who, reading, may fancy-- + With a kindly thought for me-- +There's a grain of gold in its driftings, + I dedicate this "Debris."_ + + + + + +PREFACE + +The waif is born of emergency, and timidly launched on the rough +sea of opinion. Critic, touch it gently; it assumes nothing--has +nothing to assume; and your scalpel can only pain its + AUTHOR + + + + +CONTENTS + + Mystery of Carmel + Wasted Hours + Rocking the Baby + "I Don't Care" + A Stained Lily + A Valentine + Which One + Life's Way + Uncle Sam's Soliloquy + Nay, Do Not Ask + A Picture + Hang Up Your Stocking + Opening the Gate for Papa + White Honeysuckle + Estrangement + Bring Flowers + Good-Bye + In the Twilight + Home + Why? + Out in the Cold + To Jennie + Watching the Shadows + I Give Thee Back Thy Heart + Light Beyond + A Neglected "Woman's Right" + Would You Care? + A Thought of Heaven + Consolance + When the Roses Go + The Difference + Beware + A Regret + "It is Life to Die" + O, Speak it Not + A Shattered Idol + Poor Little Joe + Fate + The Ghosts in the Heart + Only a Tramp + Put Flowers on My Grave + Old Aunt Lucy + Unspoken Words + O! Take Away Your Flowers + Rain + I love Him for His Eyes + Only + Somebody's Baby's Dead + The Withered Rosebud + My Ships Have Come From Sea + + + + + +MYSTERY OF CARMEL. + +The Mission floor was with weeds o'ergrown, +And crumbling and shaky its walls of stone; +Its roof of tiles, in tiers and tiers, +Had stood the storms of a hundred years. +An olden, weird, medieval style +Clung to the mouldering, gloomy pile, +And the rhythmic voice of the breaking waves +Sang a lonesome dirge in its land of graves. +As I walked in the Mission old and gray-- + The Mission Carmel at Monterey. + +An ancient owl went fluttering by, +Scared from his haunt. His mournful cry +Wakened the echoes, till roof and wall +Caught and re-echoed the dismal call +Again and again, till it seemed to me +Some Jesuit soul, in mockery-- +Stripped of rosary, gown, and cowl-- +Haunted the place, in this dreary owl. +Surely I shivered with fright that day, +Alone in the Mission, old and gray-- + The Mission Carmel at Monterey. + + +Near the chapel vault was a dungeon grim, +And they say that many a chanted hymn +Has rung a knell on the moldy air +For luckless errant prisoned there, +As kneeling monk and pious nun +Sang orison at set of sun. +A single window, dark and small, +Showed opening in the heavy wall, +Nor other entrance seemed attained +That erst had human footstep gained. +I paused before the uncanny place +And peered me into its darksome space. +Had it of secret aught to tell, +That locked up darkness kept it well. +I turned, and lo! by my side there stood +A being of strangest naturehood. +Startled, I glanced him o'er and o'er, +Wondering I noted him not before. +His form was stooped with the weight of years, +And on his cheek was a trace of tears; +Over all his face a shade of pain +That deepened and vanished, and came again. +Fixed he his woeful eyes on me-- +Through my very soul they seemed to see. +And lightly he laid his hand on mine-- +His hand was cold as the vestal shrine. +"'Tis haunted," he said, "haunted, and he +Who dares at night-noon go with me +To this cursed place, by phantoms trod, +Must fear not devil, man, nor God." +"Tell me the story," I cried, "tell me!" +And frightened was I at my bravery. +A curious smile his thin lips curved, +That well had my bravery unnerved. +And this is the story he told that day +To me in the Mission old and gray-- + The Mission Carmel at Monterey. + +"Each midnight, since have seventy years +Begun their cycle around the spheres, +Two faces have looked from that window there. +One is a woman's, young and fair, +With tender eyes and floating hair. +Love, and regret, and dumb despair, +Are told in each tint of the fair sweet face. +The other is crowned with a courtly grace, +Gazing, with all a lover's pride, +On the beautiful woman by his side. +Anon! a change flits o'er his mien, +And baffled rage in his glance is seen. +Paler they grow as the hours go by, +With the pallor that comes with the summons to die. +Slowly fading, and shrinking away, +Clutched in the grasp of a gaunt decay, +Till the herald of morn on the sky is thrown; +Then a shriek, a curse, and a dying moan, +Comes from that death-black window there. +A mocking laugh rings out on the air, +From that darkful place, in the nascent dawn, +And the faces that looked from the window are gone. +Seventy years, when the Spanish flag +Floated above yon beetling crag, +And this dearthful mission place was rife +With the panoply of busy life; +Hard by, where yon canyon, deep and wide, +Sweeps it adown the mountain side, +A cavalier dwelt with his beautiful bride. +Oft to the priestal shrive went she; +As often, stealthily, followed he. +The padre Sanson absolved and blessed +The penitent, and the sin-distressed, +Nor ever before won devotee +So wondrous a reverence as he. +A-night, when the winds played wild and high, +And the ocean rocked it to the sky, +An earthquake trembled the shore along, +Hushing on lip of praise its song, +And jarred to its center this Mission strong. +When the morning broke with a summer sun, +The earth was at rest, the storm was done. +Still the Mission tower'd in its stately pride; +Still the cottage smiled by the canyon-side; +But never the priest was there to bless, +And the cottage roof was tenantless. +Vainly they sought for the padre, dead, +For the cottage dwellers; amazed, they said +'Twas a miracle; but since that day +There's a ghost in the Mission old and gray-- + The Mission Carmel of Monterey + +"A sequel there is to that tale," said he, +"Of the way and the truth I hold the key." +"Show me the way," I cried, "Show me +To the depth of this curious mystery!" +He waved me to follow; my heart stood still +Under the ban of a mightier will +Than mine. A terror of icy chill +O'er-shivered my being from hand to brain, +Freezing the blood in each pulsing vein, +As I followed this most mysterious guide +Through the solid floor at the chancel side, +Into a passage whose stifling breath +Reeked with the pestilence of death. +Down through a subterranean vault, +Over broken steps with never a halt, +Till we stood in the midst of a spacious room, +A charnel-house in its shroud of gloom. +Only a window, narrow and small, +Left in the build of the heavy wall, +Through which the flickering sunbeams died, +Showed passway to the world outside. +Slowly my eyes to the darkness grew, +And I saw in the gloom, or rather knew, +That my feet had touched two skeleton forms, +One closely clasped in the other's arms. +Recoiling, I shuddered and turned my face +From the fleshless mockery of embrace. +Again o'er a heap of rubbish and rust, +I stumbled and caught in the moth and dust +What hardly a sense of my soul believes-- +A mold-stained package of parchment leaves! +A hideous bat flapped into my face! +O'ercome with horror, I fled the place, +And stood again with my curious guide +On the solid floor, at the chancel's side. +But, lo! in a moment the age-bowed seer +Was a darkly frowning cavalier, +Gazing no longer in woeful trance, +Vengeance blazed in his every glance. +Then a mocking laugh rang the Mission o'er, +And I stood alone by the chapel door; +And, save for the mold-stained parchment leaves, +I had thought it the vision that night-mare weaves. +Hardly a sense of my soul believes, +Yet I held in my hand the parchment leaves. +Careful I noted them, one by one, +Each was a letter in rhyming run, +Written over and over, in tenderest strain, +By fingers that never will write again. +I strung them together, a tale to tell, +And named it "The Mystery of Carmel." +And these are the letters I found that day, +In the mission ruin, old and gray-- + The Mission Carmel of Monterey: + + + + +TO THE HOLY FATHER SANSON + +Oh, holy father, list thee to my prayer! + I may not kneel to thee as others kneel, +And tell my heart-aches with the suppliant's air, + But fiercer burns the fire I must conceal. + +My soul is groping in the mists of doubt, + The sunlight and the shadows all are gone, +Only a cold, gray cloud my life's about, + Nor ever vision of a fairer dawn. + +A father ne'er my brow in loving smoothed, + Nor taught my baby tongue to lisp his name; +No mother's voice my childish sorrows soothed, + Nor sought my wild, imperious will to tame. + +Yet ran my life, like some bright bubbling spring, + Too full of thoughtless happiness to care +If that the future might more gladness bring, + Or might its skies be clouded or be fair. + +Afar upon the purple hills of Spain-- + Since waned the moons of half a year ago-- +I sported, reckless as the laughing main, + Nor dreamed in life a thought of grief to know. + +To-day I pine here in a chain whose gall + Is bitterer than drop of wormwood brought +From that salt sea where nothing lives, and all + The recompense my willfulness has brought. + +Oh, holy father, list thee to my prayer! + And though I may not kneel as others kneel, +And tell my heart-aches with a suppliant air, + I crave they grace a sickened soul to heal. + +Here, close beside this sacred font of gold, + My humble prayer, oh, father, I will lay, +With all its weight of misery untold; + And wait impatient that which thou wilt say + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +When to the font, this morn, my lips I pressed, + A fairy's gift my fingers trembled o'er; +A sweeter prayer ne'er smile of angel blessed, + Nor gemmed a tiar that the priesthood wore. + +The secret of they grief I may not know, + Since that thy lips refuse the tale to tell; +Methinks, dear child, it was the sound of woe + That woke an echo in my heart's deep well. + +The wail of a spirit that a-yearning gropes + In darkness for the sunlight that is fled; +A broken idol in secret wept, and hopes-- + Crushed hopes--that are to thee as are the dead. + +A tender memory ling'ring yet of when + Each bounding pulse beat faster with its joy; +A something that allured, and won, and then + With waking fled, and years may not destroy + +The impress which it left upon thy brain + But seek thee, child, grief's ravaging to stay? +Thy tears might fall as falls the show'ring rain, + They could not wash the heart's deep scars away. + +Repine thee not; shroud not they faith in gloom; + Shrink not to meet a disappointment's frown; +Away beyond the narrow bordered tomb, + Who here have borne the cross may wear the crown. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +Whisper to him, fairies, whisper-- + Whisper softly in his ear +That some one is waiting, waiting, + Listening his step to hear. + +Fairies, if he knew his presence + Would a demon's spell allay, +Would he heed your timid whisperings? + Would he--will he come to-day? + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +Fairies whisper, every whisper, + In the silence of the night, +And he catches the soft murmurs + Floating in the starry light. + +And they tell him; yes, they tell him, + All in accents sweet and clear, +Of the beautiful Hereafter + That is ever drawing near. + +There are loved ones, waiting, waiting, + For his footfall on the shore; +They will welcome his appearing-- + They will greet him o'er and o'er. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +Oh, would the fairies to her whisper + The truths which they to him impart, +Teach her a beautiful hereafter, + A Heaven to bless a tired heart. + +Yet thinks she that the dear ones waiting + Would envy not the boon she craves-- +To rear fair friendship's sacred alter + Where love and hope sleep in their graves. + +She knows not that a loving welcome + Will wait her in a realm of light, +Nought of a future meeting whispers, + No faith illumes her soul's dark night. + +But oh! she knows, has by experience, + The saddest of all lessons learned; +Knows that she gathered dead-sea apples, + Which in her hands to ashes turned. + +She knows into a trammelled torrent, + Is changed her life's free flowing tide; +Knows that her hand no oar is holding, + With which her drifting bark to guide. + +She knows, yes, knows that, like the mirage, + Which for the thirsty traveler gleamed, +The sweet ideal she fondly cherished + Was never there; it only seemed. + +If what she knows is to her proven + A false, deluding, fleeting show, +Can she, generous spirit, can she + Trust blindly what she does not know? + +But if for this he shuts against her + The heart that's shining in his eyes, +She'll bring the gift that for the Peri + Unbarred the gate of paradise. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +If she'll left him be her teacher + In the mysteries of life, +In the spirit's grand unfoldment + Far beyond this world of strife, + +A sacred altar he will build her, + And dedicate to friendship true, +And this shall be their bond of union, + More constant that all others knew. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +Kind teacher, henceforth be it mine, +To kneel at friendship's sacred shrine, +And hope's bright budding flowers entwine + Into a garland for they brow. +And thou shalt wait not for the hours +That gem creation's radiant towers, +To woo thee to elysian bowers, + But wear it now. + +Too long a dreamer have I been, +Too long life's dark side only seen; +And if thou canst, while thus I kneel, +The mystery of life reveal, + Then gladly will I learn of thee. +For as on flowers the dewdrops fall, +As sunbeams break the storm-cloud's pall, +As pardon comes to lives which blame +Has crushed beneath its weight, so came + Thy sympathy to me. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + + Life is love, and only love, + Love that had its source above. +It wreathes with flowers the chastening rod, +And diamond decks the throne of God. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +If "life is love, and only love," + Then never have I lived before; +But for love's sack I'll sit me down + And careful con the lesson o'er. + +I fain would win the shining goal, + So far away, so seeming fair, +But could not reach its hights alone; + Then, teacher, take me, take me there. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +Thy teacher, then, will take thee there, + And ever watch with tender care, +To guard they way to loftiest aim, + And his reward thy love shall claim. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +O, inconsistent teacher, + He'd knowledge give away; +Fill head and heart, from tome of art, + Then take me for his pay. + +He'd kindly lead me to the realm + Where joyous freedom reigns, +He'd teach my soul love's sweet control, + Then claim it for his pains. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +Ah! Reyenita, do not charge + To selfishness thy teacher's plea, +He seeks thine every wish to bless, + His deepest fault is loving thee. +"Heaven's kingdom," said the Nazerene, +"Is in the heart;" sweet fairy queen + Thou rulest along this realm of mine, + Canst say I have no place in thine? + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +They boast of Ormuz's milk-white pearls, + The ruby's magic art, +And proudly wear the crystal drop + That fires the diamond's heart. + +And these may admiration claim, + And countless wealth may sway, +But rarer gem was given to me, + One golden summer day. + +Its wondrous tints, a brilliant glow, + Emit in darkest gloom, +A sweeter fragrance 'round it clings, + Than breath of eastern bloom. + +Were all earth's costly jewels thrown + In one great glittering heap, +They could not buy for ev'n a day + The gem I'd selfish keep. + +Yet 'twas not won from pearly depths, + Nor gleaned from diamond mine, +Nor all the chemist's subtlety + Its substance could define. + +It ne'er was set in band of fold + Some dainty hand to grace, +Ne'er shone in diadem to deck + A brow of kingly race. + +For me alone, a wizard spell + Lies prisoned in its beams, +Hours of enchanted ecstacy + And days of Eden dreams. + +Wouldst know the precious gift with which + For worlds I would not part? +The priceless jewel is they love, + Its setting is my heart. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +Oh, in the hush of midnight's hour, + When darkness sleeps on land and sea, +How oft in dreams, sweet fragile flower, + Thou'st come to bless and comfort me. + +O, in the hush of midnight's hour, + How oft from taunting dreams I start, +To find thee but a fancy flower-- + Thou cherished idol of my heart. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +I've a beautiful home, where I live in my dreams, +So joyous and happy--an Eden it seems; +All beautiful things in nature and are +Are blending to rapture the mind and the heart; +No discords to jar, no dissensions arise, +'Tis calm as Italia's ever blue skies, +When kissed by the bright rosy blush of the morn; +And a voice of the spheres on the breezes is borne, +Soft as the murmur of sea-tinted shells, +Sweet as the chiming of far away bells; +And grief cannot enter, nor trouble nor care, +And the proud peerless prince of my soul, he is there. + +In my beautiful home from the cold world apart, +He holds me so close to his fast beating heart; +More enchanting his voice than the syren-wrapt song, +O'er the wind-dimpled ocean soft floating along, +As he whispers his love in love's low passioned tone, +Such home, and such lover, no other has known. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +O, let us leave this world behind-- +Its gains, its loss, its praise, its blame-- +Not seeking fame, nor fearing shame, +Some far secluded land we'll find, +And build thy dream-home, you and I, +And let this foolish world go by. + +A paradise of love and bliss! +Delicious draughts in Eden bowers, +Of peace, and rest, and quiet hours, +We'll drink, for what we've missed in this. +The shafts of malice we'll defy, +And let this foolish world go by. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +Life of my life, my soul's best part, +I could not live without thee now; +And yet this love must break my heart, + Or break a sacred vow. + +Which shall it be? an answer oft +From puzzling doubts I've sought to wake; +Must joy, or misery, hence be mine, + Must heart or promise break? + +Alone, Heaven's highest court would prove +A desolated land to me; +Earth's barest, barren desert wild, + A paradise with thee. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +Thou hast beamed on my pathway, a vision of light, + To guide and to bless from afar; +To illume with thy smile the dead chill of night, + My star, my bright, beautiful star. + +The sun pales before thee, the moon is a blot + On the sky where thine own splendors are; +And dark is the day where thy presence is not, + My star, my bright, beautiful star. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +O love, do not call me a star! +'Tis too cold and bright, and too far +Away from your arms; I would be, +The life drops that flow in your veins, +The pulses that throb in your heart. +My bosom should be the warm sea +Of forgetfulness, tinged with the stains +Of the sunset, when day-dreams depart; +You should drink at its fountain of kisses, +Drink mad of its fathomless deep; + +Submerged in an ocean of blisses, +I'd be something to kiss and to keep. +Loving, and tender, and true, +I'd be nearer, oh! nearer to you +Than the glittering meteors are; +Then, love, do not call me a star. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +Thou'st made for me an atmosphere of life; + The very air is brighter from thine eyes, +They are so soft and beautiful, and rife + With all we can imagine of the skies. + +O woman, where is they resistless power; + I swore the livery of Heaven to grace, +Yet stand, to-day, a sacrilegious tower, + Perjured by the witchery of thy face. + SANSON. + + + + +TO SANSON + +Then, love, I'll give thee back thy perjured vow; + I would not hold thee with one pleading breath; +It may be best to leave the pathway now, + That can but lead to death. +I'll crush the agonies that burning swell, + And say farewell. + REVENITA. + + + + +TO REVENITA + +"Farewell?" No, not farewell, I'll worship ever + Thy form divine. +No death's despair, no voice of doom shall sever + My heart from thine. + +Thou'st crowned me with they love and bade me wear it, + I kiss the shrine. +I will not give thee up, nay, here I swear it, + That thou art mine. + * * * * * * * * * * +A desecrated holiness is o'er me, + I've held the Thyrsus cup; +I've dared the thunderbolts of Heaven for thee, + I will not give up. + SANSON. + + World, farewell! + And thou pale tape light, by whose fast-dying flame I write +these words--the last my hand shall pen--farewell! What is't to +die? To be shut in a dungeon's walls and starved to death? She +knows, and soon will I. She sought to learn of me, and I to teach +to her, the mystery of life. Ha, ha! Who claimed her by the +church's law has given us both to learn the mystery of death. +What was't I loved? The eyes that thrilled me through and through +with their magnetic subtlety? They're there, set on my face; but +where's their lifened light? What was't I loved? The mouth whose +coral redness I have buried in my own? 'Tis there, shrunk 'gainst +two rows of dead pale pearls, and cold and colorless as lip of +statue carved of marble. Was it the form whose perfect outline +stamped it with divinity? It's there, but 'reft of all its +winsome roundness, and stiffening in the chill of death. It makes +me cold to look upon its rigidness. But just this hour the breath +went out; was't that I loved? 'Twas this I clasped and kissed. +What is it that we've christened love, that glamours men to +madness, and stains with falsehood virgin purity? It made this +grewsome charnel vault a part of Heaven--the graves there of +those murdered knaves made rests of roses for our heads; it made +him spring the bolt and lock us in. Where is the creed's +foundation? I've shrived a thousand souls--I cannot now absolve +my own. To quench this awful thirst, I cut an artery in my arm +and sucked its blood. The thirstness did not cease. They lied. +'Twas not the vultures at Prometeus' heart, 'twas hunger at his +vitals gnawed. The salt drops that I swallowed from that vein +have set my brain on fire. What's that? The ground's a-tremble +'neath my feet as touched with life. Earth, rend your breast and +let me in! For anything but this dire darkness, made alive with +vengeful eye-balls--his eyes! They glare with hate at me. I heard +him laugh but now. For anything but this most loving corpse whose +head caressing rests it on my feet. Ah, no, I did not mean it +thus; I would not get away alone. I loved that corpse. It was the +sweetest bit of human frailty that to man e'er brought a blessing +or a curse. I turned from Dias' holy grail to taste its nectar. +Hell, throw a-wide your sulphur-blazoned gates, I'll grasp it in +my arms and make the plunge! Hist! what was that? I heard him +laugh again. Laugh, fiend, you cannot hurt me more. Ah! Reyenita, +mine in life you were, in death you shall be mine. When this +clogged blood has stopped the wheels of life, I'll put my arms +around your neck, I'll lay my face against your frozen one, and +thus I'll die. When this foul place has crumbled to the sunlight, +some relic-hunting lunatic will stumble o'er our bones, and +pitiless will weave a tale for eyes more pitiless to read. Back, +Stygian ghoul! Death's on me now. I feel his rattle in my throat! +My limbs are blocks of ice! My heart has tuned it with the +muffled dead-march drum! A jar of crashing worlds is in my ears! +A drowsy faintness creeps upon-- + + + * * * * * + + + The seal is broken, the mystery tell; + You have read the letters, what do they tell? + Do they tell you the story they told that day + To me, in the Mission old and gray-- + The Mission Carmel at Monterey? + + + + +WASTED HOURS. + +If that thy hand with heart-will sought, + To work with Christ-love underlying, +But ere thou hadst accomplished aught + Time passed thee by while vainly trying, + The wasted hour, the vain endeavor, + Will wait thee in the far forever. + +If thou hadst toiled from dawn till eve, + But felt no thrill of joy in giving +No heart made glad, no want relieved, + Lived but for selfish love of living, + Though idle hours went by thee never, + The hours are lost to thee forever. + + + * * * * * + + + +ROCKING THE BABY. + +I hear her rocking the baby-- + Her room is just next to mine-- +And I fancy I feel the dimpled arms + That round her neck entwine, +As she rocks, and rocks the baby, + In the room just next to mine. +I hear her rocking the baby + Each day when the twilight comes, +And I know there's a world of blessing and love + In the "baby bye" she hums. +I can see the restless fingers + Playing with "mamma's rings," +And the sweet little smiling, pouting mouth, + That to hers in kissing clings, +As she rocks and sings to the baby, + And dreams as she rocks and sings. + +I hear her rocking the baby, + Slower and slower now, +And I know she is leaving her good-night kiss + On its eyes, and cheek, and brow +From her rocking, rocking, rocking, + I wonder would she start, +Could she know, through the wall between us, + She is rocking on a heart. +While my empty arms are aching + For a form they may not press +And my emptier heart is breaking + In its desolate loneliness +I list to the rocking, rocking, + In the room just next to mine, +And breathe a prayer in silence, + At a mother's broken shrine, +For the woman who rocks her baby + In the room just next to mine. + + + + +"I DON'T CARE." + +"I don't care," we hear it oft + And oft, the words are seeming fair; +But many a heartache lies beneath + A careless "I don't care!" + +In every age, from every tongue, + The vain assertions fell; +But oh, trust not the cheating words, + For never truth they tell! +Hearts may grow sick with hope deferred, + Be crushed with black despair, +But lips, too proud to own defeat, + Will whisper, "I don't care!" + +A thoughtless friend flings out in jest-- + As jesters always do-- +A deadly shaft you wince beneath, + You know the story's true; +But while the dart has pierced your heart, + And poisoned, rankles there, +You look amused, and answer with + A smiling, "I don't care!" + +When Fortune's favors are withdrawn, + And friends like shadows fled, +When all your fondest dreams are gone, + Your dearest hopes are dead, +You curse the fickle goddess, then, + Who wrought you such despair, +Yet hide chagrin beneath a frown, + And mutter, "I don't care!" + +The veteran, battle-scarred, who fills + A nation's honored place, +Feels keener than his saber's point, + Unmerited disgrace. +With indignation all aflame + He meets some rival's stare; +But for all answer gives the worlds + A freezing "I don't care!" + +A woman's heart is trifled with, + Her hopes are ground to dust, +Her proud soul humbled with neglect, + Betrayed her sacred trust, +Yet, while to desperation stung, + With death and ruin there, +She'll crush the tears and cheat you with + A laughing "I don't care?" + +"I don't care!" 'tis but a breath, + The words are seeming fair, +But many a heartache lies beneath + A careless "I don't care!" + + + + +A STAINED LILY. + +Some lilies grew by a brook-side, + Tall and white, and cold, +And lifted up to the sunshine + Their great red hearts of gold. + +And near to their bed grew mosses, + rank vines, and flowers small, +And loathsome weeds, and thistles, + And the sunlight warmed them all. + +Anon, the proud white lilies + Were gathered one by one, +Each to crown a festal + Rarest under the sun. + +One lily stooped to the brooklet, + Her face she knew was fair, +And the face of flowing water + Mirrored her image there. + +A hand upraised in envy, + Or carelessness, or jest, +Flung from the turbid water, + Mud, on the lily's breast. + +And all the proud, white lilies + Turned their faces away, +And nobody plucked that lily, + And day, and night, and day + +She wept for her ruined beauty: + And the dew-drops, and the rain, +Touched with her tears, in pity + Fell on the muddy stain. + +Still stood she in her grieving + Day, and night, and day; +Nor tears, nor dew, nor rain-drops, + Could fade the stain away. + +Pining in desolation, + Shunned by each of her kind, +Sought she a bitter solace + In creatures of a coarser mind. + +But the breath of the nettle stung her, + And the thistle's rude embrace +Burned her sensitive nature, + And scarred the fair, stained face. + +Lower drooped the lily, + And died at the feet of the weeds; +And only the tender mosses + Ministered to her needs. + +And still the tall while lilies + Stand as cold, and proud, +And still the weeds and thistles + Against the lilies crowd. + +Alike the same warm sunbeams, + On weed and flower fall, +Alike by the same soil nourished, + And the great God made them all. + + + * * * * * + + + +A VALENTINE. + +I love thee for the soul that shines + Within thine eyes' soft beaming, +From out whose depths the prisoned fires + Of intellect are gleaming. + +I love thee for the mind that soars + Beyond earth's narrow keeping, +That measures suns, and stars, and worlds, + Through boundless limits sweeping. + +I love thee for the voice whose power + Can in my heart awaken +To passioned life each slumbering chord + The ruder tones have shaken. + +Thou ne'er, perchance, mayst feel the chain + With which this love has bound thee, +Nor dream thee of the hand that flung + Its glittering links around thee. + +And vainly mayst thou deem the task + Thy captive bounds to sever-- +Who madly dates to love thee now + Will love thee on forever. + + + * * * * * + + + +WHICH ONE. + +Each was as fair as the other, + And both as my life were dear; +And the voices that lisped me mother, + Heaven's music in my ear. + +One faded from life--and mother, + And died in the summer dawn; +And I turned away from the other + And wept for the child that was gone. + +Then I lay in a weird sleep-vision, + Before me an earth dark scene, +And the land of the sweet Elysian, + And only a grave between. + +One child soft called me mother + Out from the shining door, +And smile and beckoned; the other + Unconsciously played on the floor. + +One's path, to my inward seeing, + Was light with a wondrous day, +And led to the heights of being, + And an angel showed the way. + +The other lay where Marah's + Hot sands with snares are strewn-- +Through many a darksome forest, + And the way was roughly hewn. + +A faith to my soul was given-- + The weird sleep-vision o'er-- +And I turned from the child in heaven + To the child that played on the floor. + + + * * * * * + + + +LIFE'S WAY. + +Good-bye, sweetheart, he said, and clasped her hand, + And rained his kisses on her tear-wet face; +Then broke away, and in a foreign land. + For her dear sake, sought gold, that he might place + +Love's jeweled crown upon his queen's fair brow, + And pour his hard-won treasures at her feet; +And swore, than Heaven, than life itself, his vow + To her he held more sacred and more sweet. + +She waited as the woman only may + Whose eyes are blinded oft with unshed tears; +Lines on her forehead grew, and threads of gray; + The weary days crept into weary years. + +"Oh stars, go down! Oh sun, be shrouded now! + My love comes not; he does not live," she said; +And brushed the curls he'd kissed back from her brow, + And pout on mourning for her dead. + +And still as oft the day came round that he + Had left his warm good-bye upon her lips, +As oft she sought the head-land by sea, + And longing watched the far-off white-sailed ships. + +To-day, the low sand-beach was over-strewn; + Torn sail, and broken spar and human form, +'Gulfed by the waves, and crushed, and then out-thrown-- + A ship went down in yester-night's wild storm. + +She walked among the debris, and the dead, + As some sweet mercy-sister on her round, +Scanning each up-turned face with nameless dread, + For aught of life; her tireless searching found + +A babe--a waif with tawny tangled locks, + And great blue eyes with wonder brimming o'er; +Of all the human freight wrecked on the rocks, + The only living thing that washed ashore. + +A pearl-gemmed golden case upon its breast + She oped, then stared, her eyes a-sudden wild, +A name, a pictured face told all the rest; + His name--his face--his child! + + + * * * * * + + + +UNCLE SAM'S SOLILOQUY. + +I'm a century old and more to-day-- + A ripe old age for a modern man,-- +Yet they who rocked my cradle, they say, + Predicted a thousand years my span; +They christened me at the fount of prayer, +And gave me a star-gemmed robe to wear. + +My first free breath was battle-smoke + A prayerful nurses did not abhor +The sounds that first my ear awoke-- + The clash and din and shout of war. +They pressed in my hand a crown of might +And pointed my way to the eagle's flight. + +Cannon and sword were my playthings to bless, + (Dangerous toys for a babe to try,) +The stirring reveille my more caress, + The wild tattoo was my lullaby; +And well, methinks, as they years have run, +Have I wrought the work my sires begun. + +An infant prodigy I, and ere + Expired a tenth of my granted day, +I wrested from lion-grasp the spear-- + A nation's power I held in sway; +I broke the gives from freedom's graves, +And steam and lightning I bound my slaves. + +I flung my starred robe on the breeze, + From burning tropic to arctic cold. +On distant isles, in distant seas, + A foot-hold gained with sword and gold. +Atlantic's slope and Pacific's strand +I bound together with an iron band. + +But of late I've premature grown old; + There's something wrong with the clothes I wear; +There is something wrong with the helm I hold, + Else I hold it wrong,--there's wrong somewhere. +Disease too has thrown me his poisoned dart; +His workman are "striking" right at my heart. + +My head is so strangely vision thrilled + With plans to evade the demon's stay, +But all the plots that my brain have filled + Only have served to augment his sway, +And on my feet, at the sunset's door, +Is spreading a troublesome grievous sore. + +I'm growing ill I can plainly see, + And many prescribe my pain to ease, +But somehow each medicine proves to be + "A remedy worse than the disease." +Though strong as ever, should once my strength +Give way, I must fall a fearful length. + +My doctors say they know the cause, + And they've gone to work with eager zest, +Probed and expounded with weighty straws, + And leeches attached to my troubled breast; +I fee them well, as attests my purse +But day after day I'm growing worse. + +Though they have not yet touched the cause they knew, + And are wrangling over its direful flood, +They promise to build me better than new, + And stop the drain on my famished blood; +But lest they're careful while building the dam +They'll scoop out a grave for "Uncle Sam." + + + + +NAY, DO NOT ASK. + +Nay, do not ask me, Sweet, if I have loved before, + Or if, mayhap, in other years to be, +A younger, fairer face than thine I know, + I'll love her more than thee. + +What should it matter if I've loved before, + So that I love thee now, and love thee best? +What matters it that I should love again + If, first, the daisy-buds blow o'er thy breast? + +Love has the waywardness of strange caprice, + One can not chain it to a recreant heart, +Nor, when around the soul its tendrils twine, + Can will the clinging, silken bonds to part. + +It is enough, I hold thee prisoned in my arms, + And drink the dewy fragrance of thy breath; +And earth, and heaven, and hades, are forgot, + And love holds carnival, and laughs at death. + +Then do not ask me, Sweet, if I have loved before, + Or if some day my heart might turn from thee; +In this brief hour, thou hast my soul of love, + And thou are _Is_, and _Was_, and _May be_--all to me. + + + + +A PICTURE. + +A little maid, with sweet brown eyes, +Upraised to mine in sad surprise; +I held two tiny hands in mine, + I kissed the little maid farewell. +Her cheeks to deeper crimson flushed, + The sweet, shy glances downward fell; +From rosy lips came--ah! so low-- + "I love you, do not go!" + +I see it through the lapse of years-- +This picture, ofttimes blurred with tears. +No tiny hands in mine are held, + No sweet brown eyes my pulses wake-- +Only in memory a voice + E'er bids me stay for love's sweet sake. + + + * * * * * + + + +HANG UP YOUR STOCKING. + +Laugh, little bright-eyes, hang up your stocking; + Don't count the days any more; +Old Santa Claus will soon be knocking, + Knocking, + Knocking at the door. + +Through the key-hole slyly peeping, +Down the chimney careful creeping, +When the little folks are sleeping, +Comes he with his pack of presents. +Such a grin! but then so pleasant +You would never think to fear him; +And you can not, _must_ not hear him. +He's so particular, you know, +He'd just pick up his traps and go +If but one little eye should peep +That he thought was fast asleep. +Searching broomstick, nails, and shelf, +Till he finds the little stocking-- +Softly lest you hear his knocking-- +Smiling, chuckling to himself, +He fills it from his Christmas store, +And out he slips to hunt for more. + +Then laugh, little bright-eyes, and hang up your stocking; + Don't count the days any more; +Old Santa Claus will soon be knocking, + Knocking, + Knocking at the door. + + + + +OPENING THE GATE FOR PAPA. + +Hurrying out to the gateway + Go two little pattering feet; +Eagerly out through the palings + Peer two eyes bright and sweet. + +A footstep as eager is answering + The sweet eyes that patiently wait +And papa is kissing, and blessing + The baby that opens the gate. + +And every day all the long Summer, + At noontime and evening late, +The little one's watching for papa-- + Waiting to open the gate. + +And now the bright Summer is ended, + And Autumn's gay mantle unrolled; +The maple leaves wooing the breezes + Are gorgeous in crimson and gold. + +At noonday the face at the gateway + Is flushed with a feverish glow, +At night the bright head on the pillow + Is tossing in pain to and fro. + +The father kneels down in his anguish, + And stifles the sobs with groan; +He knows that his idol is going-- + Going out in the midnight alone. + +He buries his face in the pillow, + Close, close, to the fast failing breath; +A little arm clasps his neck closely, + A voice growing husky in death + +Says pleadingly, half in a whisper: + "Please, darling papa, don't cry; +I know Birdie's going to Heaven-- + I heard doctor say he will die; + +"But I'll ask God for one of the windows + The pretty star-eyes look out through, +And when you come up with the angels + I'll sure be the first to see you. + +"And maybe I'll find my dear mamma; + And you'll come up, too, by-and-by, +And Birdie will watch for you, papa, + And open the gate of the sky." + +The little hand falls from his shoulder + All nerveless, the blue eyes dilate, +A shuddering sigh, then the baby + Is waiting to open the gate. + + + + +WHITE HONEYSUCKLE. + +White honeysuckle, "bond of love," + Emblem born in Orient bowers, +Whence mythic Deities have wooed, + And told the soul's desire in flowers. +As sweet thy breath as Eden's balm, + As sweet and pure. Methinks that erst +Thy flower was of our earth a part, + Some angel hand the seed immersed +In fragrance of the lotus' heart, + And dropped it from the realm of calm. +And life of earth, and life above, + Thou bindest with they "bond of love." + + + * * * * * + + + +ESTRANGEMENT. + +Only a "something light as air," + Which never words could tell, +Yet feel you that between your lives + A cloud has strangely fell; +Though never a change in look or tone, + A change your heart is grieving; +You sentient feel the friend you love + Has deemed you are deceiving. + +A promise rashly given has bound + Your lips the truth to screen, +The nameless something gathers fast + As mist the hills between; +You wrap you in your cloak of pride, + The words are never spoken +That might have thrown the portal wide, + And friendship's tie is broken. + + + * * * * * + + + +BRING FLOWERS. + +Bring flowers, bring flowers, thou Queen of the Spring, + Sweet flowers to garland the earth, +Exotics to bloom in the mansions of wealth, + Wild flowers for the lowly hearth. + Bring flowers for the brave and strong-hearted, + Bring flowers for the merry and glad, + Bring flowers for the weak and despairing, + Bring flowers for the weary and sad. + +Bring flowers, bring flowers, thou Queen of the Spring, + Sweet flowers, the dark hours to cheer. +Bring flowers for the little ones, flowers for the aged, + Bring flowers for the bridal and bier. + In this beautiful, sun-lighted Springtime, + Bring flowers their fragrance to shed, + To brighten the homes of the living, + To garnish the graves of the dead. + + + + +GOOD-BYE. + + Good-bye! Good-bye! +Once pledged we fondly o'er and o'er +That nought should cloud our love's bright sky; +Once thought we that we could not stay +Apart and live. But oh! For us +Fate willed it not to linger thus. +To-day earth's wintry poles apart +Are further not that we in heart, +Nor colder than our sunless way. +Passion and pride can do no more, +And you and I can only say + Good-bye! Good-bye! + + Good-bye! Good-bye! +So sad it seems the sound of tears, +So sad it seems life's parting sigh, +And yet, alas! It can but be. +Deserted ghostly wrecks of dreams +Once freighted with Hope's golden gleams, +Wrecks drifting on a sullen sea, +To mock the memory-haunted years, +Are all now left to you and me. + Good-bye! Good-bye! + + + + +IN THE TWILIGHT. + +In the twilight gray and shadowy, + Deepening o'er the sunset's glow, +Softly through the mystic dimness + Flitting shadows come and go. + +As my thoughts in listless wandering + With these phantom shadows fly, +Meseems they wear the forms of faces, + Faces loved in days gone by. + +One by one I recognize them + As they silent gather near; +Some are loving, childish faces, + Knowing naught of grief or care. + +Some are blooming, youthful faces, + Victory confident to win, +Some are from the contest shrinking, + Wearied with the strife and din. + +Some are aged, wrinkled faces, + Time life's sands has nearly run; +Not a leaflet spared of Springtime, + Not a furrow left undone. + +Other faces, sweet, sad faces, + Wafted o'er the Lethean sea, +Radiant smile in twilight shadows, + But they came not back to me. + +In the twilight, dreamy twilight, + When the sultry day is gone, +Quietly o'er vale and hillside, + Tenderly as blush of dawn, + +Come the timid evening breezes, + Sighing through the Summer leaves, +Transient as thought's pencil-paintings, + Sweet as weft that fancy weaves. + +And as shadows in the twilight + Shapeful forms of faces wear, +So these dainty, light-winged zephyrs, + To my hearing, voices are. + +Voices whose sad intonations + Seemingly, as flit they past, +Bring to memory hopes long shattered, + Blissful dreams too bright to last. + +Voices, merry laughing voices, + Fondly loved in other years, +Mournfully are whispering to me + That their mirth was drowned in tears. + +Telling of a fairer fortune + Far away 'neath tropic skies, +Telling of a broken circle, + Scattered friends and severed ties. + +Other kindly, loving voices, + Winning in the long ago, +Tell me now, as then they told me, + "Thou canst live for weal or woe." + +Are these weird and mystic voices + But creations of the brain? +Only in illusive fancy + Must I hear their tones again? + +Would some magic power lend me + Aid to stay the witching tone, +Art to pain the beauteous picture + Ere its impress swift has flown. +* * * * * * + +While I dreamed the day has faded, + Stars are shining overhead, +Evening winds have ceased to whisper, + Twilight's shadows all have fled. + +Thus, too oft, our life-work seemeth, + And we, when disowned its sway, +Find we are pursuing phantoms, + Shadows in the twilight gray. + + + + +HOME. + +"How many times and oft" has the sweet, sweet word been sung in +song and told in story. And he sang sweetest of home, who had +never a home on earth. If one to whom home was only a poet's +dream, could portray its charms by only imagination, until a +million hearts thrilled with responsive echo, how deeper, how +more intense must be his longings and recollections who +treasures, deep down in his heart the sweet delights and pure +associations that he has known, but never may know again. We do +not appreciate our blessings until they have passed. We do not +try to gather the sunbeams until the clouds have obscured them. + +How many and many a youth, brave-hearted and true, answers with +eager haste the war call of his native land all heedless of the +home he is leaving, and the loving arms that sheltered him there. +But when his soldier's blood is crimsoning the sands beneath a +foreign sky, the thoughts that go with his ebbing life are of +home--all of home. + +Who rushes from his home out into the world, blind devotee of +fortune's phantom goddess, to realize a phantom indeed, sits down +in his despondency and his despair, to dream of "dear old home". + +Yes, too, and the wretch--so seemingly depraved that nothing +beautiful or pure of soul is left--who flings from him his life +in mad suicide, goes out into that trackless eternity with home +upon the lips of death. Then if the patter of baby's feet, the +glad ring of children's voices echo within the walls of your +home, if father and mother; and brothers and sisters brighten it +with the sunshine of love, enjoy it while you may, make it your +heaven, and be not in over-haste to break the ties that bind you +there. + +You may never weep, perchance, over a home made desolate by +death; and yet, time--so surely as time is--will make it but only +a memory. And all too late each heart will learn that it did not +prize enough the blessedness of home. + + + + +WHY? + +Why is it we grasp at the shadow + That flits from us swift as thought, +While the real that maketh the shadow + Stands in our way unsought? +And why do we wonder, and wonder, + What's beyond the hill-tops of thought? + +Why is it the things that we sigh for + Are the things that we never can reach? +Why, only the sternest experience + A lession of patience can teach? +And why hold we so careless and lightly + The treasures that are in our reach? + + +Why is it we wait for the future, + Or dwell on the scenes of the past, +Rather than live in the present + Hastening from us so fast? +Why is it the prizes we toil for, + So tempting in fancy's mould cast, +Prove, when to our lips we have pressed them, + Only dead-sea apples at last? +And why are the crowns, and the crosses, + So wondrous inequally classed? + +Ask it, ye, over and over, + Let the winds waft your question on high, +Till memory wanes with the ages, + Till the stars in eternity die. +And out from the bloom and the sunshine, + From the rainbow o'erarching the sky, +From the night and the gloom and the tempest, + Echo will answer you, "Why?" + + + * * * * * + + + +Suggested by reading, "Lights and Shades" in San Francisco. + +OUT IN THE COLD. + +Out from a narrow, crowded street, +Sick'ning resort of shame and crime, + Wearing upon her brow a curse, +Out in the darkness, lost to sight, +Out in the dreary Winter night, + Fleeing a fate than Nessus worse. +On through the gathering mist and dew +'Till the fog-wrapped city is hid from view; + 'Till the rugged cliffs with the waters meet, +And the mingled voices from every clime + And the hurrying tramp of reckless feet +Are drowned in the breakers' sobbing rhyme. +But farther out than this ocean beach, +Farther than Charity's hands will reach, +Farther than Pity _dares_ to come, +Is she who rushes, with white lips dumb, +To repeat the tale that too oft is told-- + Out in the cold. + +From the loathesome dens whose scenes appal, +Whose tainted breath's the Simoom's blast; + Away on the dizzying, surf-washed rock, +Pausing a moment upon the brink-- +Pausing a moment perchance to think; + Sliding the bolt in Memory's lock, +And back in its dusty, haunted hall, +Living again the vanished past-- +Living her happy childhood o'er; + Chasing the butterflies over the flowers, +Petted and loved, a girl again, + Dreaming away the golden hours; +Living again another scene, +Flattered and toasted "beauty's queen;" +Taking again, with a merry laugh, +From gallant hands a sparkling draught. +O, angels, tell her 'tis a draught of woe! +That _ruin_ lies in its amber glow. +Over the rest let oblivion fall, +Cover it up with a funeral pall; +Turn away with a shudder and groan, +Let her live it over alone. +Few are the months, as they count, since then; +Short and joyous they else had been +That to anguished heart and maddened brain +Are long decades of woe and pain. +Over, again, on the wings of thought, +Treading the path which her ruin wrought; +Over again each step she went, +From the sunny home to the swift descent, +Where sin lies hidden 'neath a gilded pile, +Down to the haunts of the low and vile. +One more step and it all is done. + Only a shriek the midnight breaks-- +Only a splash in the waves below, + A wider ripple the water makes. +The rock is bare by the ocean side-- +A death-white face with the ebbing tide +Is floating away from the headland bold-- + Out in the cold. + +A lifeless form, in the wintry dawn, + Left on the sand by a rising swell; +A story of weakness, shame, and wrong + Mutely the frozen features tell. +Noiseless falls on it, the tears of dew, + Over it softly the breezes blow; +Wavelets, kissing the tangled hair, + Murmur a requiem sad and low. +Out to the barren, bleak hillside + Rough hands bear it with scorn and jest. +Cradled once in a mother's arms-- + Once by a mother's fond lips pressed-- +Under the clods of a new-made grave; + A rough-hewn board at the foot and head, +Where never a flower of love shall wave; + Left with the city's nameless dead-- +Left with her fate unwept, untold-- + Out in the cold. + + + * * * * * + + + +TO JENNIE. + +Farewell my darling, fare thee well, + Life hence has only dearth; +With thee it were too sweet a dream-- + Too much Heaven, for earth. +Thou dost not know the depth of pain + This parting gives to me, +Nor how, as time drags weary on, + My soul will sigh for thee. + +Each loved one that thou leavest here, + Some other love may wear, +Each heart will have some other heart + Its loneliness to share. +But I have nothing, darling, left-- + You're all the world to me-- +And only God and Heaven can know + The love I give to thee. + + + + +WATCHING THE SHADOWS. + +Watching the shadows, the fire-light shadows, + That gather and play on the wall; +Dark, flitting shadows, fanciful shadows, + That gather and rise and fall. +Reading the fire shadows' language of shadows, + Pages of darkness and light-- + Watching, watching, + Watching the shadows to-night. + +Watching the shadows, the fire-light shadows, + That over the wall fitful play; +Dreaming of shadows, dreaming of shadows, + Deep darker shadows than they. +Heart-shading shadows, soul-darkening shadows, + Flitting in memory's light-- + Dreaming, dreaming, +Watching the shadows to-night. + +Watching the shadows, the fire-light shadows, + Merrily dancing about, +Wondering if heart-shadows vanish like shadows, + When life's fitful flame has gone out; +Wondering if shadows are deep, darker shadows, + Aeons of ages of blight; + Wondering, wondering, + Watching the shadows to-night. + + + + +I GIVE THEE BACK MY HEART. + +I give thee back thy fickle heart, + Thy faithless vows I've spurned, +I bury deep the blighted hopes + That in my bosom burned. + +Yet who had thought a brow so fair, + From guile so seeming free, +A voice so sweet, so winning rare, + So treacherous could be? + +Who would have dreamed a form that seemed + Proud Honor's templed shrine, +Could hold within an urn of sin + A soul so false as thine? + +Nor strange 'twould be, if ne'er again, + Till age had wasted youth, +That heart betrayed by such as thou, + Could trust in human truth. + +But go! and though thy wiles no more + Will move my heart to strife, +Canst glad thy vain soul with the thought + That thou hast wrecked a life. + + + + +LIGHT BEYOND. + +Is your heart bowed down with sorrow; + Does your lot the hardest seem; +Think you of a brighter morrow, + Of a fairer future dream. + +Have your prospects all been blighted; + Has each promise proved a snare; +Deepest wrongs are sometime righted, + Never yield you to despair. + +Has the slanderer's tongue unsparing + Ruthless tarnished with its stain; +Was your good name worth the wearing-- + Go and win it back again. + +Would you rest where sunshine lingers; + You must toil the darkness through; +Only work with willing fingers, + Only live you brave and true. + +Never care or trouble borrow, + "Trouble's real if it seems"-- +Ever see a bright to-morrow, + Though you see it but in dreams. + + + + +A NEGLECTED "WOMAN'S RIGHT." + +I have listened to this cry of "Woman's Rights," this clamoring +for the ballot, for redress for woman's wrongs, and I could but +think, amid it all, that there is one "woman's right"--the right +that could make the widest redress for woman's wrongs--which she +holds in her own hands and does not exercise. It is the right to +defend, to uplift and ennoble womankind; to be as lenient to a +plea for mercy from a fallen woman as though that plea had come +from the lips of a fallen man; to throw around her also the broad +mantle of charity, and if she would try to reform, give her a +chance. Far be it from any honest woman to countenance the +abandoned wretch who plies an unholy calling in defiance of all +morality, for her very breath is contamination; but why should +you greet with smiles and warmest handclasps of friendship the +man who pays his money for her blackened soul? When two human +beings ruled by the same mysterious nature, have yielded to +temptations and fallen, what is this monster of social distinction +that excuses the sin of one as a folly or indiscretion, while +it makes that of the other a crime, which a lifetime cannot +retrieve? It is a strange justice that condones the fault of one +while it condemns the other even to death; that gives to one, +when dead, funeral rite and Christian burial and to the other +the Morgue and a dishonored grave, simply because one is a +strong man and the other a weak woman. And it is a stranger, +sadder truth that 'tis woman's influence which metes out this +justice to woman. Mother, if you must look with scorn and +contempt upon the woman who through her love for some man has +gone down to destruction, do not smilingly acknowledge her +paramour a worthy suitor for your own unsullied daughter. Maiden, +if you must sneeringly raise your white hand and push back into +the depths of pollution the woman who seeks to reinstate herself +in the path of rectitude, do not permit the man who keeps half a +dozen mistresses to clasp his arm around your waist and whirl you +away to the soft measure of the "Beautiful Blue Danube." If the +ban of society forbids that you say to a penitent sin-sick +sister, "Go and sin no more," if you must consign her to the life +of infamy which inevitably follows the deaf ear which you turn +upon her appeal, then do it; but in God's name do not turn around +and throw open the doors of your homes and welcome to the +sanctity of your family altars the man who enticed her to ruin. +Ah, woman, by your tireless efforts you may win the right to +vote, your voice may be heard in the Assembly Halls of the +Nation; but if you administer as one-sided a justice in political +life as you do in social life, the reform for which you pray will +never come! + + + + +WOULD YOU CARE? + +All day on my pillow I wearily lay, + With a stabbing pain at my heart, +With throbbing temples, and a feverish thirst + Burning, my lips apart. +If I longed for a touch of your soft, strong hand, + For you one little minute there; +For a smile, or a kiss, or a word to bless, + Would you blame me, love?--would you care? + +When the long, long, lonesome day was done, + And you never for a moment came, +If I tried to shut you out of my heart, + Impatient at your name; +If disappointment's bitter sting + Was harder than pain to bear, +If I turned away with a doubting frown, + Would you blame me, love?--would you care? + +Should I die to-night, and you saw me not + Again till my soul had fled +With its vain request, and my features wore + The white hue of the dead-- +Would you place just once, in a last caress, + Your hand on my death-damp hair? +Would you give me a thought, or a fond regret? + Would you kiss me, love?--would you care? + + + + +A THOUGHT OF HEAVEN. + +Friend of my heart, you say to me + That your belief is this-- +The heaven is but a vision rare + Of pure, ethereal bliss. + +And life there but a dream enhanced, + Where never sound alarms; +Where flowers ne'er fade and skies ne'er cloud, + And voiceless music charms-- + +And save as see we in our dreams + The dear ones gone before, +The friends that here we knew and loved, + We'll know and love no more. + +An endless and unbroken rest, + Nor change, nor night, nor day, +Where aimless, as in sleep, we'll dream + Eternity away. + +Sweet friend of mine, that Heaven of thine + Methinks if overblest; +We could not work on earth enough + To need so long a rest. + +Our human nature could not be + Content with rest like this, +And even bliss could cloy, if we + Had nothing else but bliss. + +Great Nature's hand, in every plan, + Had laid in wise design, +But what design, or use, is in + This theory of thine? + +If, when our earth-career is done, + All conscious life must cease, +And we drift on, and on, and on, + In endless, dreamy peace-- + +If Heaven is but a mystic spell, + Whose glowing visions thrall, +Why should we have a life beyond? + Why have a Heaven at all? + + + + +CONSOLANCE. + +"Be brave?" why, yes, I will; I'll never more despair; + Who could, with such sweet comforting as yours? +How, like the voice that stilled the tempest air, + Your mild philosophy its reasoning pours. + +Go you and build a temple to the skies, and make + Your soul an alter-offering on the pile; +Then, from its lightning-riven ruin, take + Your crushed and bleeding self, and calmly smile. + +When loud, and fierce, and wild, a storm sweeps o'er your rest, + Say that it soothes you--brings you peace again; +Laugh while the hot steel quivers in your breast, + And "make believe" you love the scorching pain. + +See every earthly thing your life is woven round, + Fall, drop by drop, until your heart is sieved! +Go mad and writhe, and moan upon the ground, + And curse, and die, and say that you have prayed and lived! + +Then come to me, as now, and I will take your hand, + And look upon your face and smile and say: +"All were not born to hold a magic wand; + Cheer up, my friend, you must be brave always." + + + + +WHEN THE ROSES GO. + +You tell me you love me; you bid me believe +That never such lover could mean to deceive. +You tell me the tale which a million times +Has been told, and talked, and sung in rhymes; +You rave o'er my "eyes" and my "beautiful hair," +And swear to be true, as they always swear; +But the wrinkles will grow, and the roses go, +And lovers are rovers oft, you know, + When the roses go. + +I have heard of a woman, sweet and fair, +With dewy lips and shining hair, +And you pledged to her, on your bended knee, +The self-same vow you make to me. +She was fairer than I, I know; +She was pure and true, and she loved you so; +But the wrinkles will grow and the roses go-- +How she learned that trouble comes, _you know_, + When the roses go. + +You're a man in each outward sense, I trow, +With the stamp of a god on your peerless brow. +You hold my hand in your thrilling clasp, +And my heart grows weak in your subtle grasp, +Till I blush in the light of your tender eyes, +And dream of a far-of paradise-- +Almost forgetting that ever from there +Another was turned in her bleak despair. +But the wrinkles will grow, and the roses go-- +I will answer you, love, my love, you know, + When the roses go. + + + * * * * * + + + +THE DIFFERENCE. + +With odds all against him, struggling to gain, +From fortune a name, with life to maintain, +Toiling in sunshine, toiling in rain, +Never waiting a blessing Heaven-sent, +Working and winning his way as he went-- +Whether he starved, or sumptuously fared, +Nobody knew and nobody cared. + +With success-crowned effort that fate had defied, +That wrought out from fortune what favor denied, +Standing aloof from the world in his pride; +The niche he has carved on fame's slippery wall +Friends are proclaiming with heraldry-call. +His Croesus-bright scepter has magical sway, +Yester's indifference solicits to-day. +His daring his triumph, how daily he fares, +Every one knows, and anxiously cares. + + + + +BEWARE. + +Beautiful maiden, + So daintily fair, +Thy rose-hued lips, + Thy soft, flowing hair, +Symmetric perfection, + Sweet, winning face, +The charms that thou wearest + A palace might grace; +And yet thy bright beauty + May wreck and despair. +Beautiful maiden, + Beware! oh, beware! + +There are flattering tongues + That 'twere death to believe, +And loves who woo + But to win and deceive; +For innocent feet + There is many a snare. +Beautiful maiden, + Beware! oh, beware! + + + + +A REGRET. + +Close on my heart was resting + A sunny golden head, +As the dim gray of the twilight + Crept round with noiseless tread. + +"Tell me a 'tory, mamma," + The blue-eyed baby said, +"About some itty birdie + In za itty birdie bed. + +"'Bout fen oo was itty + An'ze mens was walkin' hay +An' found free ittie birdies + Wiz za muzzer don away." + +"Some other time, my darling; + Mamma's tired now." +A shade of disappointment + Swept over the baby's brow. + +The dear blue eyes grew misty; + O, lips that lived to blame, +That kissed and whispered "sometime"-- + That "sometime" never came. + +Again, the dim, gray twilight + Creeps round with noiseless tread, +But on my heart is resting + No sunny golden head. + +No sweet voice pleads with mamma + "Tell me a 'tory" now, +And only death can take away + The shadow on my brow. + + + * * * * * + + + +"IT IS LIFE TO DIE." + +"It is life to die," the muse has sung, + The prophet words have rung from pole to pole, +The trust, the hope to which many have clung, + An echo woke in many a weary soul. + +"Ah! welcome thrice if but that death would come + As sweeps the avalanche from Alpine hight, +As falls the flashing storm-sent lightning-bolt, + Resistless in its terror and its might. + +"But oh! to die by slowest slow decay, + To clothe a dying heart in life's warm breath, +When every day repeats a long eternity, + And every hour is but another death!" + +O, God! why were we born to live a life, + From very thought of which our souls must shrink, +To sink down in the waves of human strife, + And ever only wait, and wait, and think. + +No wonder that so many hapless ones, + Too sensitive the specter to defy, +Arm, Hamlet-like, against a sea of woes, + And test the truth, that "it is life to die." + + + * * * * * + + + +O, SPEAK IT NOT. + +O, speak not hastily the word + Thine ear from idle tongues has heard. +If false the tale thou couldst recall, + How hard, and cruel must it fall? +If true, why, helping it along + Will never, never right the wrong. +O, speak it not, not speak the word + That wounds, though but in jest 'tis heard; +Keep back the thrust, the look askance, + The petty doubt, the sneering glance; +Keep back the taunts and jeers, + Life has enough of breaking hearts, +Of pointed barbs and venomed darts-- + Enough of pain and tears. + + + + +A SHATTERED IDOL. + +O blame me not for the cruel words + In a moment of madness said; +The shadow that fell upon my life + Is cold as the shrouded dead. +Deem not I am hard and heartless; + My tears are as warm as thine; +'Twas clay that I crowned and worshipped, + And wept o'er its crumbled shrine. + +To me, my passionate, deathless soul, + Was less than his finger-tips; +He turned away fro the gold of my love + For the dross on a wanton's lips. +My faith in his truth is broken-- + Even truth itself is a lie. +I have cursed him!--but I love him, + And I'll love him till I die. + + + + +POOR LITTLE JOE. + +A ring on the door bell, + Some one at the door, +Mute asking admittance + Where never before +A stranger in midnight, + In silence and stealth, +Sought access to gain + In a mansion of wealth. +Into the gaslight + A package is borne; +Quickly from round it + The wrappings are torn. +What is it? a baby! + What seek you to-night, +So rosy and smiling, + Nor in fear, nor in fright? + +Ah! little intruder, + What is it you wear +So close to your breast? + Sure but hand in despair +Could have written the message + Unconscious you bear, +And "loved" and "God blessed" you + While leaving you there. +Let's see the story + 'Tis telling for you; +How brief and pathetic; + But can it be true? +A mother heart brokenly + Praying in grief +From hand of a stranger + Her baby's relief. +"He's helpless and homeless, + But stainless as snow; +O, take him and keep him-- + My poor little Joe." + +That's all there is of it, + If false or if true; +Yet long enough seems it, + And sad enough, too. +No love-welcomed greeted + The sweet baby face, +In the life that gave his life + There was not a place. +No place for the baby, + There's none for him here, +No heart that may give him + A smile or a tear. +Off to the refuge, + For such, he must go, +He's only a foundling-- + Poor little Joe. + +Deserted, forsaken, + Thrust out in the strife, +Adrift on the pitiless + Ocean of life. +What will become of him, + Who may decide +If good or if evil + His life shall betide. +No tender caresses + Ever to know, +Nor guidance, nor blessing-- + Poor little Joe. + + + * * * * * + + + +FATE. + +Ruth was a laughing-eyed prattler, + Thoughtless, and happy, and free; +She planted a seed in the garden, + And said: "It will grow to a tree-- + A beautiful blossoming tree." + +The birds and the squirrels played round it, + As careless and merry was she, +But not tree ever grew from her planting-- + No beautiful blossoming tree. + +Ruth was a winsome-faced maiden, + Happy, and hopeful, and free; +She planted a seed in the garden, + And smilingly waited to see-- + A beautiful blossoming tree. + +She covered the ground up with flowers, + The butterfly came, and the bee, +But no tree ever grew from her planting-- + No beautiful blossoming tree. + +Ruth was a pale saddened woman, + Thoughtful, with tremblings and fears, +She planted a seed in the garden, + And watered the place with her tears-- + And watched it with tremblings and fears. + +The winds and the rains beat upon it, + The lightnings flashed o'er it in glee; +But she sleeps 'neath the tree of her planting-- + A beautiful blossoming tree. + + + + +THE GHOSTS IN THE HEART. + +They came in the hush of the midnight, + In the glare of the noonday start +Out from the graves we made them-- + The graves we made in the heart. + +There is love with its fickle fancies; + Its grave was so wide and deep, +And we heaped the mound with oblivion, + But the soul of love could not sleep. + +And hate! ah, we buried it deeper + Than all the rest of the train; +But one word through memory flashing, + And its ghost comes back again. + +There are phantoms of sunshiny hours + That fled when the summer time fled, +And specters that mock while they haunt us, + Long buried, but never dead. + +And ever and ever an hour + Will come that the heart-wraiths control, +Till down from Eternity's tower + A banshee shall ring for the soul. + + + + +ONLY A TRAMP. + +Only a tramp by the roadside dead, + Only a tramp--who cares? +His feet are bare, his dull eyes stare, + And the wind plays freaks with his unkempt hair. +The sun rose up and the sun went down, + But nobody missed him from the town +Where he begged for bread 'till the day he was dead. + He's only a tramp--who cares? +Only a tramp, a nuisance gone. + One more tramp less--who cares? + + Ghastly and gray, in the lane all day, +A soiled, dead heap of human clay. + Would the wasted crumbs in the rich man's hall, +Where the gas-lights gleam and the curtains fall, + Have given him a longer lease of breath-- +Have saved the wretch from starving to death? + He's only a tramp--who cares? + +Only a tramp! was he ever more + Than a beggar tramp? Who cares? +Was the hard-lined face ever dimpled and sweet? + Has a mother kissed those rough brown feet, +And thought their tramping a sweeter strain + Than ever will waken his ear again? +Does somebody kneel 'way over the sea, + Praying "Father, bring back my boy to me?" +Does somebody watch and weep and pray + For the tramp who lies dead in the lane to-day? + He's only a tramp--who cares? + + + * * * * * + + + +PUT FLOWERS ON MY GRAVE. + +When dead, no imposing funeral rite, + Nor line of praise I crave; +But drop your tears upon my face-- + Put flowers on my grave. + +Close not in narrow wall the place + In which my heart finds rest, +Nor mark with tow'ring monument + The sod above my breast. + +Nor carve on gleaming, marble slab + A burning thought or deed, +Or word of love, or praise, or blame, + For stranger eyes to read. + +But deep, deep in your heart of hearts, + A tender mem'ry save; +Upon my dead face drop your tears-- + Put flowers on my grave. + + + + +OLD AUNT LUCY. + +Why into that darkened chamber + Walk you with such noiseless tread? +No slumbering one will awaken-- + The sheeted form is dead. + +Why gaze on the rigid features, + So white in death's embrace, +With such look of awe and pity? + 'Tis only the same old face. + +Why touch you now so tender + The hands that silent lay? +They're only the sunburned fingers + That toiled for you night and day. + +Why now, with your tear-dimmed vision, + So softly do you press +Upon the wrinkled forehead + Your lips in sad caress? + +How much of care had lighted + That lingering, loving kiss, +Had you in life but gave it-- + You never thought of this. + +No loving hand e'er brightened + Her life with tender care, +No mother's baby-kisses + Were ever hers to share. + +Only for others caring, + The long, long years have fled; +Now, only, they say,--the neighbors-- + "Poor old Aunt Lucy's dead." + +And they whisper a girl's ambition, + A name in the world to make; +'Way back in her vanished youth-time, + Gave up for a duty's sake. + +But whatever had been the story + Of love, or grief, or woe, +It died with the heart, and no one + Will ever care or know. + +The hands were hard and toil-stained, + And sallow the cheeks and chin, +But whiter not the snow-wreath + Than the soul that dwelt within. + +And methinks a crown resplendent-- + Just over the waveless sea-- +With gems of self-denial, + Awaits for such as she. + + + + +UNSPOKEN WORDS. + +Unspoken words may thrill the heart, + Their meaning be more deeply felt +Than all the glowing oratory + Poured at the shrine where reason knelt. +The fairest pictures art conceives, + The noblest sentiments of mind, +The loveliest, purest gems of thought + Are those which never are defined. + +The hand that paints the rainbow dyes + Ne'er leaves a trace its skill to show-- +The art that gilds the sunset skies + And tints the flower, we may not know. +Nor may we know the wizard power + Which o'er our being wields control, +Nor how, when silence seals the lips, + Heart speaks to heart and soul to soul. + +We do not know from whence the life + Imbued in crystal drop of rain, +Nor why, when torn and trampled on, + The rose's fragrance will remain. +Nor know we why the tender tone + Will linger when love's dream is fled, +Now why the smile we loved will live, + Although the face it wreathed will be dead. + +Some strangely fascinating spell + Steals o'er the heart in ethic's hour; +We know not what, nor how, nor why, + Still must we own we feel its power-- +A power that wakens slumbering dreams, + Intangible emotion swells, +That penetrates the soul's deep fount, + And greets the tide that from it wells. + +It is not charm of form or face, + Nor is it long contact of years +That wins this mutual soul response, + This spirit sympathy endears. +A theory by time engraved + Fro life, one mad impulse may sweep-- +A glance may into being start + Vain hopes that nevermore may sleep. + +The quiet touch when hands are clasped + Would seemingly no sense impart, +Yet may it wake a deathless theme + And send it quivering to the heart. +And thus may kindred spirits feel, + Though tone of voice be never heard, +The sweet impassioned eloquence, + The magic of unspoken words. + + + + +O! TAKE AWAY YOUR FLOWERS. + +O! take your pale camellias back; + Their soft leaves, waxen white +And odorless, too ill accord + With my dark mood to-night. + +I do not want your hot-house flowers, + They're like the love you give-- +A something tame and passionless + That breaths but does not live. + +You take my hand as though you feared + Your clasp were over-bold, +Your kiss falls light at flake of snow, + And just as calm and cold. + +I'd rather have your hatred + Than this lifeless loving claim, +If your heart beat one throb faster + At mention of my name. + +Leave me, and bind those soulless leaves + A calmer brow above; +I cannot wear your flowers to-night-- + I do not want your love. + + + + +RAIN. + + Drop! drop! drop! + With a ceaseless patter fall, +With a sobbing sound on the sodden ground, + And the gray clouds over all. +Dost weep of the parted summer, + O, spirit of the rain? +For the vanished hours and the faded flowers + That never can come again? + +The farmer smiles at they weeping, + Hushing the whispering leaves, +And dreams of days in the Autumn haze + And the gathered golden sheaves. +There's a voice of hope, a promise, + In the sound of thy refrain, +And as bright the hours and as fair the flowers + That will come to thee again. + +And yet in our lives, though knowing + That we hold a scepter's sway, +How oft we turn with the thoughts that burn, + To weep on Autumn day. +Turn from the hopeful future + To weep in grief and pain, +For the vanished hours and the faded flowers + That never can come again. + + + + +I LOVE HIM FOR HIS EYES. + +They praised the baby's dimpled hands, + His brow so broad and fair, +They kiss the dainty rose-bud mouth, + Caress the sunny hair. +His lisping words, his tottling steps, + His smiles they praise and prize, +They love him for his cunning ways, + I love him for his eyes. + +The wealth of golden tinted curls + Old Time will streak with snow; +The rose-bud mouth so dainty curved + To sterner lines will grow. +The fleeting years will mark with change + Each feature now they prize, +Save only the sweet eyes I love-- + I love him for his eyes. + +Those wondrous, wondrous soulful eyes, + How strange the spell they fling +Unconsciously around my heart; + What memories they bring! +What buried hours come thronging back-- + A distant, dearer clime-- +Another pair of love-lit eyes, + Another summer time. + +Oh, baby, take your eyes away: + They burn into my heart! +I'll kiss you once, and say good-by, + And hid the tears that start; +But through the years to come and go, + The changeful scenes to rise, +I'll love the little baby boy-- + I love him for his eyes. + + + * * * * * + + + +ONLY. + +Only a sentence earnest spoke, + With never a thought to word it, +Fell like balm from the sea of calm, + On the aching heart that heard it. + +Only a glance, a scornful smile, + A wavering purpose altered, +Goaded a hand the crime to do + At which before it faltered. + +Only a kiss, a love caress, + Tender and trustful given, +Banished a cloud from brow of care, + Made home a woman's Heaven. + +Only a secret, chance disclosed, + Whence secret should be never, +A doubt crept into the heart that loved + And its light went out forever. + +Only a prayer, a wrong confessed, + By suppliant lowly kneeling, +Opened the gate where the angels wait, + Life's Eden field revealing. + +Careful then scatter the little things, + They make life drear and lonely, +Or strew its way with flowers gay,-- + We live by trifles only. + + + + +SOMEBODY'S BABY'S DEAD. + +A hearse all draped in mourning, + With white plumes overhead, +Bearing a little coffin-- + Somebody's baby's dead. + +Upon the velvet cover + Some hand has placed a wreath, +White as the waxen features + Of the baby that lies beneath. + +Out in the graveyard making + A rest for a shining head, +Somebody's heart is breaking, + Somebody's baby's dead. + +Over a baby's coffin, + Heaping a mound of clay, +Somebody's hopes are buried + In that little grave to-day. + +Somebody's home is dreary, + Somebody's sunshine fled, +Somebody's sad and weary, + Somebody's baby's dead. + + + + +THE WITHERED ROSEBUD. + +I gathered you, sweet little rosebud, + With a dew crown encircling your head; +Now, out of the window I toss you, + Shriveled, and scentless, and dead. +You had opened to wondrous perfection, + Had only my hand let you pass; +Yet here you have perished for water-- + I forgot to put some in the glass. + +Ah! poor little withered, dead rosebud, + How many a weak human heart, +Too like you, has famishing perished, + When life had but only a start? +Yes, many a heart, little rosebud, + Loving, and tender, and true, +For water has faded and withered, + And died in its beauty like you, +Not because there was dearth of life's fountain, + Nor the blessing to all might not pass, +But because the strong hand which it clung to + Forgot to put some in its glass. + + + + +MY SHIPS HAVE COME FROM SEA. + +You are watching a ship, O, maiden fair, +With parted lips and wistful air, +The ship that out from the sheltered bay +With white sails spread moves slow away; +And I know, my girl, the thoughts that burn +In your heart are of ship's return. +Ah! I know so well how your pulses beat, +With the great sea sobbing at your feet; +And the yellow stars in southern skies +Are brighter not than your love-bright eyes. +I, too, have stood on the sea-wet sand +And tearful waved a farewell hand, +And watched with many a longing prayer. +My face, like yours, was young and fair, +And my eyes were bright as the diamond's glow; +They've lost their sparkle--long ago. +I stand along on the beach to-day, +Watching the ships that sail away; +But never a sail from over the sea +The flowing tide will bring to me, + My ships have come from sea. + +The first was builded with childish hand, +It floated away a castle grand-- +A beautiful bubble with rainbow hues, +Lined with the crystal of morning dews; +To break at my feet by the sunny sea, +A beautiful bubble came back to me-- + Came back from my ship at sea. + +I fashioned another in gladsome way +And sent it forth on a Summer day. + I see it yet, a fairer craft, +Never at danger mocking laughed; +Its shrouds were the sheen of happy hours, +Its helm a wreath of orange flowrs; +And I freighted it down with love and truth, +The golden hopes of my sunny youth. +Had it lived the storm--but it could not be, +A stranded wreck on the surf-washed lea, + My ship came home from sea. + +And then a smiling fairy bark, +A fragile, precious-freighted ark, +Out on life's ocean drear and dark. +And I prayed to God as I never before, +To shield this back from the tempest's roar, +To spare me this--but it could not be, +A tiny coffin came back to me-- + Came back from my ship at sea. + +With reckless hand I launched again, +A venture on the treacherous main, +Bound for ambition's dizzy court; +Sailed from a hopeless, loveless port; +With gloomy walls whose silence chilled, +With ghostly haunting memories filled, +With never a breath of the roses dead; +Never a rest for a weary head, +Never a dream of a sweet to be, +Hopeless, loveless still, to me, + My ship came home from sea. + +The last, and least, of all the ships +Fashioned with hands, and heart, and lips, +I pushed from shore with its decks untrod +And the freight it bore was my faith in God. +I recked not whither its way, nor when, +Nor how, if ever, 'twould come again, +And this, alone, came back to me, +Rich-laden from the stormy sea. +And so, sweet maiden, while your dreams +Paint fairest all that fairest seems, +I stand with you and watch to-day +The ship that sails form the shore away; +But never a sail from over the sea +The flowing tide will bring to me-- + My ships have come from sea. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEBRIS*** + + +******* This file should be named 16108.txt or 16108.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/1/0/16108 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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