Chapter VII

It must a-bin an hour er so
We all set there,
Talkin o' pore
Old Tugg, you know,
'At never, wuz ketched up before--
When--all slow-like--the door-
Knob turned--and Tugg come shamblin' in,
Hand-cuffed'--'at's what he wuz, I swear!--
Yit smilin,' like he hadn't bin
Away at all! And when we ast him where
The _Deputy_ wuz at,--"I don't know where," Tugg said,--
"All _I_ know is--he's dead."

LET US FORGET.

Let us forget. What matters it that we
Once reigned o'er happy realms of long-ago,
And talked of love, and let our voices low,
And ruled for some brief sessions royally?
What if we sung, or laughed, or wept maybe?
It has availed not anything, and so
Let it go by that we may better know
How poor a thing is lost to you and me.
But yesterday I kissed your lips, and yet
Did thrill you not enough to shake the dew
From your drenched lids--and missed, with no regret,
Your kiss shot back, with sharp breaths failing you;
And so, to-day, while our worn eyes are wet
With all this waste of tears, let us forget!

JOHN ALDEN AND PERCILLY.

We got up a Christmas-doin's
Last Christmas Eve--
Kindo' dimonstration
'At I railly believe
Give more satisfaction--
Take it up and down--
Than ary intertainment
Ever come to town!

Railly was a _theater_--
That's what it was,--
But, bein' in the church, you know,
We had a "_Santy Clause_"--
So 's to git the _old folks_
To patternize, you see,
And _back_ the institootion up
Kindo' _morally_.

Schoolteacher writ the thing--
(Was a friend o' mine),
Got it out o' Longfeller's
Pome "Evangeline"--
Er some'rs--'bout the _Purituns_--.
_Anyway_, the part
"_John Alden_" fell to _me_--
And learnt it all by heart!

Claircy was "_Percilly_"--
(Schoolteacher 'lowed
Me and her could act them two
Best of all the crowd)--
Then--blame ef he didn't
Git her Pap, i jing!--
To take the part o' "_Santy Clause_,"
To wind up the thing.

Law! the fun o' practisun!--
Was a week er two
Me and Claircy didn't have
Nothin' else to do!--
Kep' us jes a-meetin' round,
Kindo' here and there,
Ever' night rehearsin'-like,
And gaddin' ever'where!

Game was wo'th the candle, though!--
Christmas Eve at last
Rolled around.--And 'tendance jes
Couldn't been surpassed!--
Neighbors from the country
Come from Clay and Rush--
Yes, and 'crost the county-line
Clean from Puckerbrush!

Meetin'-house jes trimbled
As "Old Santy" went
Round amongst the childern,
With their pepperment
And sassafrac and wintergreen
Candy, and "a ball
O' popcorn," the preacher 'nounced,
"Free fer each and all!"

Schoolteacher suddently
Whispered in my ear,--
"Guess I got you:--_Christmas-gift_!--
_Christmas is here_!"
I give _him_ a gold pen,
And case to hold the thing,--
And _Claircy_ whispered "_Christmas-gift_!"
And I give her a _ring_.

"And now," says I, "jes watch _me_--
Christmas-gift," says I,
"_I'm_ a-goin' to git one--
'_Santy's_' comin' by!"--
Then I rech and grabbed him:
And, as you'll infer,
'Course I got the old man's,
And _he_ gimme _her_!

REACH YOUR HAND TO ME.

Reach your hand to me, my friend,
With its heartiest caress--
Sometime there will come an end
To its present faithfulness--
Sometime I may ask in vain
For the touch of it again,
When between us land or sea
Holds it ever back from me.

Sometime I may need it so,
Groping somewhere in the night,
It will seem to me as though
Just a touch, however light,
Would make all the darkness day,
And along some sunny way
Lead me through an April-shower
Of my tears to this fair hour.

O the present is too sweet
To go on forever thus!
Round the corner of the street
Who can say what waits for us?--
Meeting--greeting, night and day,
Faring each the self-same way--
Still somewhere the path must end.--
Reach your hand to me, my friend!

THE ROSE.

It tossed its head at the wooing breeze;
And the sun, like a bashful swain,
Beamed on it through the waving frees
With a passion all in vain,--
For my rose laughed in a crimson glee,
And hid in the leaves in wait for me.

The honey-bee came there to sing
His love through the languid hours,
And vaunt of his hives, as a proud old king
Might boast of his palace-towers:
But my rose bowed in a mockery,
And hid in the leaves in wait for me.

The humming-bird, like a courtier gay,
Dipped down with a dalliant song,
And twanged his wings through the roundelay
Of love the whole day long:
Yet my rose turned from his minstrelsy
And hid in the leaves in wait for me.

The firefly came in the twilight dim
My red, red rose to woo--
Till quenched was the flame of love in him,
And the light of his lantern too,
As my rose wept with dew-drops three
And hid in the leaves in wait for me.

And I said: I will cult my own sweet rose--
Some day I will claim as mine
The priceless worth of the flower that knows
No change, but a bloom divine--
The bloom of a fadeless constancy
That hides in the leaves in wait for me!

But time passed by in a strange disguise,
And I marked it not, but lay
In a lazy dream, with drowsy eyes,
Till the summer slipped away,
And a chill wind sang in a minor key:
"Where is the rose that waits for thee?"

* * * * *

I dream to-day, o'er a purple stain
Of bloom on a withered stalk,
Pelted down by the autumn rain
In the dust of the garden-walk,
That an Angel-rose in the world to be
Will hide in the leaves in wait for me.

MY FRIEND.

"He is my friend," I said,--
"Be patient!" Overhead
The skies were drear and dim;
And lo! the thought of him
Smited on my heart--and then
The sun shone out again!

"He is my friend!" The words
Brought summer and the birds;
And all my winter-time
Thawed into running rhyme
And rippled into song,
Warm, tender, brave, and strong.

And so it sings to-day.--
So may it sing alway!
Though waving grasses grow
Between, and lilies blow
Their trills of perfume clear
As laughter to the ear,
Let each mute measure end
With "Still he is thy friend."

SUSPENSE.

A woman's figure, on a ground of night
Inlaid with sallow stars that dimly stare
Down in the lonesome eyes, uplifted there
As in vague hope some alien lance of light
Might pierce their woe. The tears that blind her sight--
The salt and bitter blood of her despair--
Her hands toss back through torrents of her hair
And grip toward God with anguish infinite.
And O the carven mouth, with all its great
Intensity of longing frozen fast
In such a smile as well may designate
The slowly-murdered heart, that, to the last,
Conceals each newer wound, and back at Fate
Throbs Love's eternal lie--"Lo, I can wait!"

THE PASSING OF A HEART.

O touch me with your hands--
For pity's sake!
My brow throbs ever on with such an ache
As only your cool touch may take away;
And so, I pray
You, touch me with your hands!

Touch--touch me with your hands.--
Smooth back the hair
You once caressed, and kissed, and called so fair
That I did dream its gold would wear alway,
And lo, to-day--
O touch me with your hands!

Just touch me with your hands,
And let them press
My weary eyelids with the old caress,
And lull me till I sleep. Then go your way,
That Death may say:
He touched her with his hands.

BY HER WHITE BED.

By her white bed I muse a little space:
She fell asleep--not very long ago,--
And yet the grass was here and not the snow--
The leaf, the bud, the blossom, and--her face!--
Midsummer's heaven above us, and the grace
Of Lovers own day, from dawn to afterglow;
The fireflies' glimmering, and the sweet and low
Plaint of the whip-poor-wills, and every place
In thicker twilight for the roses' scent.
Then _night_.--She slept--in such tranquility,
I walk atiptoe still, nor _dare_ to weep,
Feeling, in all this hush, she rests content--
That though God stood to wake her for me, she
Would mutely plead: "Nay, Lord! Let _him_ so sleep."

WE TO SIGH INSTEAD OF SING.

"Rain and rain! and rain and rain!"
Yesterday we muttered
Grimly as the grim refrain
That the thunders uttered:
All the heavens under cloud--
All the sunshine sleeping;
All the grasses limply bowed
With their weight of weeping.

Sigh and sigh! and sigh and sigh!
Never end of sighing;
Rain and rain for our reply--
Hopes half-drowned and dying;
Peering through the window-pane,
Naught but endless raining--
Endless sighing, and, as vain,
Endlessly complaining.

Shine and shine! and shine and shine!
Ah! to-day the splendor!--
All this glory yours and mine--
God! but God is tender!
We to sigh instead of sing,
_Yesterday_, in sorrow,
While the Lord was fashioning
This for our To-morrow!

THE BLOSSOMS ON THE TREES.

Blossoms crimson, white, or blue,
Purple, pink, and every hue,
From sunny skies, to tintings drowned
In dusky drops of dew,
I praise you all, wherever found,
And love you through and through;--
_But_, Blossoms On The Trees,
With your breath upon the breeze,
There's nothing all the world around
As half as sweet as you!

Could the rhymer only wring
All the sweetness to the lees
Of all the kisses clustering
In juicy Used-to-bes,
To dip his rhymes therein and sing
The blossoms on the trees,--
"O Blossoms on the Trees,"
He would twitter, trill and coo,
"However sweet, such songs as these
Are not as sweet as you:--
For you are _blooming_ melodies
The _eyes_ may listen to!"

A DISCOURAGING MODEL.

Just the airiest, fairiest slip of a thing,
With a Gainsborough hat, like a butterfly's wing,
Tilted up at one side with the jauntiest air,
And a knot of red roses sown in under there
Where the shadows are lost in her hair.

Then a cameo face, carven in on a ground
Of that shadowy hair where the roses are wound;
And the gleam of a smile O as fair and as faint
And as sweet as the masters of old used to paint
Round the lips of their favorite saint!

And that lace at her throat--and the fluttering hands
Snowing there, with a grace that no art understands,
The flakes of their touches--first fluttering at
The bow--then the roses--the hair--and then that
Little tilt of the Gainsborough hat.

O what artist on earth with a model like this,
Holding not on his palette the tint of a kiss,
Nor a pigment to hint of the hue of her hair,
Nor the gold of her smile--O what artist could dare
To expect a result half so fair?

LAST NIGHT--AND THIS.

Last night--how deep the darkness was!
And well I knew its depths, because
I waded it from shore to shore,
Thinking to reach the light no more.

She would not even touch my hand.--
The winds rose and the cedars fanned
The moon out, and the stars fled back
In heaven and hid--and all was black!

But ah! To-night a summons came,
Signed with a teardrop for a name,--
For as I wondering kissed it, lo,
A line beneath it told me so.

And _now_--the moon hangs over me
A disk of dazzling brilliancy,
And every star-tip stabs my sight
With splintered glitterings of light!

SEPTEMBER DARK.