Part 10 (1/2)

When She Came Home.

”When she comes home again, a thousand ways I fas.h.i.+on to myself the tenderness Of my glad welcome.”

RILEY.

”WHEN she comes home,” I thought with throbbing heart, That danced a measure to my mind's refrain.

Again from out the door I leaned and looked, Where she should come along the leafy lane.

And then she came.--I heard the measured sound Of slow, oncoming feet, whose heavy tread Seemed trampling out my life. I saw her face.

Then through my brain a sudden numbness spread.

The earth seemed spun away, the sun was gone, And time, and place, and thought. There was no thing In all the universe, save one who lay So still and cold and white, unanswering Save by a graven smile my broken moan.

She had come home, yet there I knelt _alone_.

A Resolve.

THE fields of thought are plowed so deep, So carefully are tilled, That all the granaries of the world With plenteous store are filled.

Unless I deeper plow and sow, What sheaf, then, can I bring?

So like the black-bird in the field, I'll eat the wheat and sing.

Stranded.

WE found a wreck cast up on the sh.o.r.e, Battered and bruised, and scarred and rent, And I spoke aloud, ”Here was worthless work, And a barque unfit to the sea was sent.”