Part 4 (1/2)
'TWIXT creek and bay We whisper to our white sails ”stay!
Oh, Life, a little while delay!
'Twixt creek and bay.”
So loath to go From these calm shallows that we know, We fain would stay the year's swift flow, Nor onward go
To banks more wide, Where seaward drawings of the tide Impel to deeper depths untried, Where Life grows wide.
'Twixt creek and bay-- The morning deepens into day, And richer freight we bear, alway, When in the bay.
When Youth is Gone.
HOW can we know when youth is gone,-- When age has surely come at last?
There is no marked meridian Through which we sail, and feel when past.
A keener air our faces strike, A chiller current swifter run; They meet and glide like tide with tide, Our youth and age, when youth is done.
The Fickle Heart.
CANST tell me, thou inconstant heart, What like unto thou art?
A gypsy wandering up and down Through April's green and Autumn's brown, Until the year is spent; And then, when hills are white with snow, And brooks, ice-bound, have ceased to flow, No place to pitch his tent.
Banditti.
UPON Life's lonely highway, robber bands Of grim-faced years seize with relentless hands Each traveler, and wrest from out his grasp The treasures that he fain would closer clasp.
None can escape. Each year demands its toll, Till robbed of youth, we grope toward the goal, Halting and blind, of all but life bereft, And death claims that--the only boon that's left.
The Silent Brotherhood.
ON through the cloisters of eternity The years, like monks, in slow procession pa.s.s, Telling their rosary beads, the golden days, With penance prayers of dark and dismal nights.
Hooded and cowled, with silence on they pa.s.s, Nor will they pause until their vesper rings A solemn curfew at the sunset hour, When all the fires of life are buried low, And all the worlds drop down upon their knees, To say a last ma.s.s ere the death of Time.
Spendthrift.
HE was a king one time, And they wrapped the ermine around him, And the bells rang out when they crowned him, Rang with a joyful chime.