Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two. Various
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scarce remembering what meat meant,
That my poor stomach's past reform;
And there are times when, mad with thinking,
I'd sell out heaven for something warm
To prop a horrible inward sinking.
Is there a way to forget to think?
At your age, Sir, home, fortune, friends,
A dear girl's love,—but I took to drink;—
The same old story; you know how it ends.
If you could have seen these classic features,—
You needn't laugh, Sir; I was not then
Such a burning libel on God's creatures;
I was one of your handsome men—
If you had seen her, so fair, so young,
Whose head was happy on this breast;
If you could have heard the songs I sung
When the wine went round, you wouldn't have guess'd
That ever I, Sir, should be straying
From door to door, with fiddle and dog,
Ragged and penniless, and playing
To you to-night for a glass of grog.
She's married since,—a parson's wife,
'Twas better for her that we should part;
Better the soberest, prosiest life
Than a blasted home and a broken heart.
I have seen her—once; I was weak and spent
On the dusty road; a carriage stopped,
But little she dreamed as on she went,
Who kissed the coin that her fingers dropped.
You've set me talking, Sir; I'm sorry;
It makes me wild to think of the change!
What do you care for a beggar's story?
Is it amusing? you find it strange?
I had a mother so proud of me!
'Twas well she died before—Do you know
If the happy spirits in heaven can see
The ruin and wretchedness here below?
Another glass, and strong, to deaden
This pain; then Roger and I will start.
I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden,
Aching thing, in place of a heart?
He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could,
No doubt, remembering things that were,—
A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food,
And himself a sober, respectable cur.
I'm better now; that glass was warming—
You rascal! limber your lazy feet!
We must be fiddling and performing
For supper and bed, or starve in the street.—
Not a very gay life to lead, you think.
But soon we shall go where lodgings are free,
And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink;—
The sooner, the better for Roger and me.
The Isle of Long Ago
Oh, a wonderful stream is the river of Time,
As it runs through the realm of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme,
And a boundless sweep and a surge sublime,
As it blends with the ocean of Years.
How the winters are drifting, like flakes of snow,
And the summers, like buds between;
And the year in the sheaf—so they come and they go,
On the river's breast, with its ebb and flow,
As it glides in the shadow and sheen.
There's a magical isle up the river of Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing;
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,
And the Junes with the roses are staying.
And the name of that isle is the Long Ago,
And we bury our treasures there;
There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow—
There are heaps of dust—but we love them so!—
There are trinkets and tresses of hair;
There are fragments of song that nobody sings,
And a part of an infant's prayer,
There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings;
There are broken vows and pieces of rings,
And the garments that she used to wear.
There are hands that are waved, when the fairy shore
By the mirage is lifted in air;
And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar,
Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before,
When the wind down the river is fair.
Oh, remembered for aye be the blessed Isle,
All the day of our life till night—
When the evening comes with its beautiful smile.
And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile,
May that "Greenwood" of Soul be in sight!
NOTE: The last line of this poem needs explanation. "Greenwood" is the name of a cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y. "Greenwood of Soul" means the soul's resting place, or heaven.
The Dying Newsboy
In an attic bare and cheerless, Jim the newsboy dying lay
On a rough but clean straw pallet, at the fading of the day;
Scant the furniture about him but bright flowers were in the room,
Crimson phloxes, waxen lilies, roses laden with perfume.
On a table by the bedside open at a well-worn page,
Where the mother had been reading lay a Bible stained by age,
Now he could not hear the verses; he was flighty, and she wept
With her arms around her youngest, who close to her side had crept.
Blacking boots and selling papers, in all weathers day by day,
Brought upon poor Jim consumption, which was eating life away,
And this cry came with his anguish for each breath a struggle cost,
"'Ere's the morning Sun and 'Erald—latest news of steamship lost.
Papers, mister? Morning papers?" Then the cry fell to a moan,
Which was changed a moment later to another frenzied tone:
"Black yer boots, sir? Just a nickel! Shine 'em like an evening star.
It grows late, Jack! Night is coming. Evening papers, here they are!"
Soon a mission teacher entered, and approached the humble bed;
Then