The select poems of Dr. Thomas Dunn English (exclusive of the "Battle lyrics")

What time we were wedded our prospect was high—
First floor down the chimney—my Milly and I;
Our neighbors below thought more happiness theirs,
But we climbed up to heaven when we mounted the stairs.

Some rickety furniture filled up the place,
On the walls our two photographs hung face to face;
A square of old carpet—its pile had been lost;
One teacup between us—less sugar it cost.

When sunset was making for darkness a way,
And the jack-plane and handsaw I dropped for the day,
How I entered the house with a skip and a hop,
And two steps at once, climbed the stairs to the top!

The teakettle sang a new song when I came;
The fire, at my voice, showed a ruddier flame;
And better than lamplight to chase away gloom,
The smile of my Milly illumined the room.

There were beautiful views o'er the tin-covered roofs,
Away from the sound of the street horses' hoofs,
With the air cool and pure at the height where we dwelt
And the troubles of others unknown and unfelt.

The love of my youth and the mate of my prime,
The mother of buds that were blossoms in time,
How she saved from my earnings what else had been spent,
And with much or with little was always content!

338

So saving, so toiling, a few years swept by,
We descended at last from our lodgings on high
To a house of our own; if 'twere not of the best,
It made for our fledglings a snug little nest.

In building for others, I built for myself,
Gained long rows of houses and great stores of pelf,
Till at last, fortune crowning my labor and care,
At sixty I wrote myself down “millionaire.”

And now in a mansion both lofty and wide,
I feed me ten lackeys and pay them beside,
Tread on triple-piled carpets, on cushions recline,
And from silver and porcelain luxurious dine.

Rich curtains of damask at windows are found;
Easy-chairs satin-covered in parlors abound;
The chambers are furnished in elegance all,
And armor and pictures are hung in the hall.

And there is my library—gorgeous indeed;
'Tis a fine place to smoke in or journals to read;
The books—a wise friend has selected the best;
The bindings are handsome, respected they rest.

There is all that conduces to ease and repose,
Yet something is lacking. What is it? Who knows?
There is nothing to hope for; the race has been won,
And possession breeds surfeit when striving is done.

And here, as we sit, both my Milly and I
To our first year of wedlock look back with a sigh,
When that garden of ours, so my Milly declares,
Was a Garden of Eden up four pair of stairs.

339

UNDER THE TREES.

Barnaby Barnet, a dealer in leather,
Who daily is scraping more dollars together,
Sat in his Ferry Street store one morn,
Sick of the smell of the hides and the horn,
When a barefooted girl in a calico gown,
A bit of the country brought into the town
In the shape of a nosegay—of roses alone—
Some of them budding, and others were blown.
As the perfume he drank with a relishing thirst,
The bar from the door of his memory burst,
And his senses, away to the days that had fled,
By the scent of the roses a moment were led.
No longer he sits in his counting-room heated,
No longer his desk and his ledger he sees;
He has left the close town, and is pleasantly seated,
Happily, dreamily,
Under the trees.

Glitters before him the swift-flowing river;
The heat in the air has a visible quiver;
The sheep dot the hill-side with patches of snow;
The kine in the pasture are grazing below;
He sees where the sunlight, in middle-day blaze,
With gold tints the leaves of the emerald maize,
Lights the low yellow wheat, and the tall russet rye,
With a quivering brilliance that dazzles the eye;
Sees, perched on cut underbrush, heaped for a pyre,
The hue of the oriole deepen to fire;
While, stretched in the distance, dissolving from view,
Are hill-tops that melt into lilac and blue:

340

A picture surpassing all art and its touches,
Where the hand of the Master with purpose agrees.
How his glance, in a rapture, its loveliness clutches,
Happily, dreamily,
Under the trees!

Pleasant the hum of the bees in the clover,
The rustle of branches his form bending over,
The cat-bird, loud telling her pitiful tine,
The neighing of horses, the lowing of kine.
The shout of the mowers afield he can lithe,
And the clink of the blade as they sharpen the scythe;
The cry of the jacketless boy who pursues,
Hat in hand, the gay butterfly, varied in hues;
The bark of the dog who at dragon-flies springs,
And, aloft in the air, the hawk's flapping of wings,
The grasshopper's chirrup, the katydid's cries—
All come to his ear as he listlessly lies.
Sweet sounds that, in music all others excelling,
Float, struggle, or suddenly pierce through the breeze—
His ear takes them in where his body is dwelling
Happily, dreamily,
Under the trees.

That was a day of delight and of wonder,
While lying the shade of the maple-trees under—
He felt the soft breeze at its frolicsome play;
He smelled the sweet odor of newly mown hay,
Of wilding blossoms in meadow and wood,
And flowers in the garden that orderly stood;
He drank of the milk foaming fresh from the cow;
He ate the ripe apple just pulled from the bough;
And lifted his hand to where hung in his reach,
All laden with honey, the ruddy-checked peach;
Beside him the blackberries juicy and fresh;
Before him the melon with odorous flesh.

341

There he had all for his use or his vision,
All that the wishes of mortal could seize—
There where he lay in a country Elysian,
Happily, dreamily,
Under the trees.

What, ere his thirst for the country he slakens,
Too rudely from dreaming the dreamer awakens?
The voice of the girl in the calico gown
Who brought that small bit of the country to town,
Is heard asking pay for the roses. The pay!
The wretch who had chased all that vision away?
Here were no meadows, no trees overhead;
A narrow brick street, with its stenches instead;
And Barnaby Barnet, with gesture grotesque,
Goes back to the fetters of ledger and desk.
No country for him; here no green things are grown;
His hides and his leather grow greenbacks alone;
And only when heirs, with forced weeping convey him—
Kind Death from all wearisome work giving ease—
Will his form find green fields: it will be when they lay him,
Helplessly, dreamlessly,
Under the trees.

BONNIBEL.

A bird within the parent nest
I caught, and took it to my breast;
I bought for it a cage of gold,
Splendid, indeed, but bare and cold;
I fed this dainty bird of mine
With wheaten biscuit sopped in wine;
This captive bird, which had been free,
I chirped to it, and it to me;

342

But, with its master by its side,
It drooped its little wings and died.
It was not well—it was not well;
She was the bird, my Bonnibel.

Her home was in the woodland wild,
Where all around in freedom smiled;
There skies were free of clouds; the breeze
Blew chainlessly among the trees;
Without confine the yellow deer
Browsed round about, and knew no fear;
The brook ran freely through the glen;
Her life was all unfettered when
I brought her, through mad love of mine,
Here to the city's close confine,
So much unlike her native dell—
I wronged her sorely, Bonnibel.

She missed the lowing of the herds,
The bleat of flocks and trill of birds;
The sighing of the summer breeze,
Voices of night amid the trees;
The cricket's chirp, the plover's call,
And moaning of the waterfall;
A wilding bee, she could not thrive
Here in the city's crowded hive;
Even my love could not suffice,
With all its glamour o'er her eyes;
And sad the fate which thus befell
Her sweet young life, my Bonnibel.

With all her spirit's longing pain,
Nor words nor glances made complain;
And, wasting slowly all the while,
Her face was radiant in its smile;

343

Her cheery voice was low and sweet,
As though all gladness were complete;
Yet, as her cheeks grew wan and pale,
And lost my tender words avail,
There came a voice my soul within,
Reproaching me in accents thin;
My spirit heard its utterance well,
And ached to hear it, Bonnibel.

It is not meet the pallid form
Which once embraced a heart so warm,
Should in a city churchyard lie
With greed and pleasure passing by.
Hers be the fresh and kindly earth
Within the valley of her birth,
To lowly lie and take her rest,
Asleep, the babe upon her breast;
While he, who loved her, shall remain,
Bound ever by his heavy chain,
Till he shall bid the world farewell,
And sleep beside you, Bonnibel.

THE OLD NEGRO MINSTREL.

Why, yes, I don't care if I do—
No water! reverend, if you please:
Ach! that's the stuff to bring one to,
Stiffen the back and brace the knees.
With half-a-dozen slugs as good,
Put me again within the show,
I'd bring the house down as I could,
And did, not many years ago.

344

You stare! you never looked at me
Before I threw myself away;
I tell you, bummer though I be,
I have been famous in my day.
Bones, banjo, middle man and end;
Essence of Ole Virginny too;
And Grapevine Twist and Camptown Bend—
I've run the minstrel business through.

They said no tenor voice like mine
Had ever in a troupe been heard;
So sweet, so soft, so silvery fine,
With trilling like a woodland bird.
And when I did the heel and toe,
Or walked around, or sung Ole Dad,
Or jumped Bob Ridley, O! O! O!
You'd think the people would go mad.

Another? Thankee! Come, that's prime!
It brings me to my feet again,
And minds me of the olden time
When I was quite a man of men.
And O, what labor then I took
With whitened wig to do old Ned,
To totter and my back to crook—
It all comes natural now instead.

Four years I'd been upon the stage—
I was the star of stars, they said;
My voice and acting were the rage—
Wider my reputation spread.
And off the boards, so fair my face,
So fine my form, they called me “Sam,
The Ladies' Darling”—you'll not trace
Much that I was in what I am.

345

We played—no matter where we played—
To crowded houses; all the day
An eager mob for places prayed;
At night we hundreds turned away.
No spot but what was closely filled,
Pit, boxes, gallery, aisles, and all;
I sang—the house so wrapt and thrilled,
You might have heard a tear-drop fall.

A sea of faces swam in cloud,
Calmed by my voice's silver tone;
But, singled from that earnest crowd,
My eyes took in one face alone.
There wrapt in mist, as though she dreamed,
Sat one, so beautiful and young,
My only auditor she seemed,
For her alone my song I sung.

O'er heads of men and forms of men,
My soul went out to hers that night;
And back came hers to mine again,
Until all space was filled with light.
And when the curtain on me fell,
And her no longer I could see,
It seemed the place around was hell,
And heaven forever barred to me.

Give me another! If you'd raise
The buried from its hidden grave,
And summon back forgotten days,
And would not have me howl and rave,
Steady my nerves with whisky! There—
Pour till you fill—this fit will pass.
Ah! how that stirs me! Now, I swear,
Youth seems to frolic in the glass.

346

I met her soon—why make the tale
Too tedious? Let all that go by—
Enough, I won her, who could fail
That bore a love so strong as I?
I won her promise to be mine,
If I would leave the boards and be
A farmer on the Brandywine—
A farmer's daughter wife to me.

We parted. I the task begun
To hoard each coin as though it were
In value thousands, every one
I gained but brought me nearer her.
And through the time that we had fixed,
I toiled, but all the toil was gay;
For with those nights of labor mixed
The promise of a happier day.

The year was up. I eager sought
The girl I loved, but mine no more;
Absence and fate their work had wrought—
She had been wed the month before.
A clown, who knew not what he gained,
Who grovelled far below my hate,
The jewel of my heart obtained,
And I had come too late—too late!

What matter by what steps I sank;
How bit by bit the lower deep
I fell to; how I drank and drank—
You see me as I crawl and creep.
Give me one more—just one—I've told
My story—every word is true—
Thank you! that's worth a ton of gold!
May no one tell the same of you.

347

THE DRAMA OF THREE.

I sat at the opera; round me there floated,
On great waves of melody, perfect delight;
Where, cloaked and bejewelled, a woman I noted,
Whose charms taught the gazer the music of sight.
So beautiful she as to startle beholders;
Whose eyes in amazement her beauty drank in—
The clear, creamy tint of her neck and her shoulders;
The sensitive nostrils; the curved, dimpled chin;
Lips shaped like a bow; tresses rippling like ocean;
Cheeks where tints of the rose at the will went and came;
Dark eyes that gave token of every emotion,
And melted to softness or kindled to flame.
Yet her beauty to me lacked a touch of the tender;
She seemed all of marble, cold, cruel, and fair,
As her neatly gloved fingers, long, shapely, and slender,
Unconsciously moving, beat time to the air
Which the tenor sang—“La donna è mobile.”

And much the face haunted me; not from its beauty,
Though fair to a wonder; but since, deeply lined,
I saw in it selfishness, blindness to duty,
That filled me with pain as I brought it to mind.
And hence a month after, when sudden they called me
To aid a sick child—to be there when it died,
For croup mocks at art—'twas the same face appalled me
That shocked me before with its coldness and pride.
The mother there suddenly summoned from pleasure,
Arrayed in her satins and laces she stood;
Not dazed, as a person who loses a treasure,
But stony in aspect and careless of mood.

348

To woe, if she felt it, too proud to surrender,
Well-bred, cold and calm, with a self-possessed air,
As when her gloved fingers, long, shapely, and slender,
Unconsciously moving, beat time to the air,
While the tenor sang, “La donna è mobile.”

She turned to me coldly, and thanked me for service
Well-meaning though useless, and bent o'er the child;
Twitched its damp, tangled hair with a clutch cold and nervous,
Threw quickly around her a glance keen and wild;
Then swept from the chamber, naught further revealing.
When said the old nurse in half-whisper to me,
“She was always a woman without any feeling,
And ne'er loved that baby, you plainly may see.
But not so the father—he fairly adored it;
He'll be wild with despair when its death he is told.”
I sharply rebuked her. “Sir, I can afford it,”
She answered, “that you should esteem me too bold;
But it's true what I tell you, let who will defend her;
Her pleasure abroad, not her home, is her care.”
Then I thought of the fingers, long, shapely, and slender,
Unconsciously making response to the air
When the tenor sang, “La donna è mobile.”

They open the hall-door—is that, then, the father?
Death waits for a visit from vigorous life.
No, strangers! What's that from the whispers I gather?
“At the club with a razor”—“Break slow to his wife.”
On disaster there evermore follows disaster—
Wide open the portals! give way in the hall!
The mansion receives for the last time its master;
For the second time Death at the house makes a call.
A shriek! on the stairway a figure descending
Glides and falls on the litter there, reckless and wild.

349

“O Richard! O Clara! and this is the ending!
Lost, lost! and forever, my husband and child!”
In the street you may hear, where each gaping one lingers,
A dismal hand-organ—strange notes for despair!
Lift her up from the corpse. Ah! those long shapely fingers
Nevermore in this world will beat time to the air
Which the organ plays—“La donna è mobile.”

THE BANKRUPT'S VISITOR.

So you're the senior of the firm, the head
Of the great house of Erbenstone and Son—
Great house that has been. That is what is said
On street, in counting-rooms, by every one.
That house had ships one time on every sea;
But then your father with his brains had sway,
His ventures, millions. Come, don't frown at me!
Sir, I have business, and I'll have my say.

Here are the firm's acceptances—behold!
There is a list, and you may scan it well:
This paper once was thought as good as gold;
Now worthless if the tales be true they tell.
Two hundred thousand and—well, never mind
The odd amount—I bought them as they lay
In many hands—investments poor I find,
But still I put the question—can you pay?

“The house has fallen now”—that cannot be;
You've made a stumble, that is not a fall;
That brings a story freshly up to me—
We queer old fellows will such things recall.

350

I'll tell you all about it, if you will,
There's something in it you will much admire;
You're bound to hear the story, so keep still—
It's somewhat chilly—let me stir the fire.

'Twas fifty years ago, one day, a lad
Orphaned and friendless—one of those you see
Hanging about the street; some good, some bad—
Walked in a counting-room as bold and free
As if he owned it—'twas your father's; there
He stood and waited. When your sire that day
Saw him, he asked with a repellant air—
“What do you want?” The answer—“Work and pay.”

The merchant stared. “Boy, I've no place for you”—
Your father's manner, not his heart, was cold—
“And if I took you here what could you do?”
And the boy answered—“Do as I am told.”
Your father liked prompt speech, and so inquired
More of the boy—he rather liked his face—
And on the following day the lad was hired
To run on errands, and to sweep the place.

You were a baby then, sir; but you came
As you grew up to boyhood, rambling through
The great storehouses. You recall the name
Of Byng, the letter-clerk. I see you do.
He was the errand boy, that bit by bit
Had risen in the house till he had won
The confidence of one who had more wit
In choosing servants than has shown his son.

One day a letter from Calcutta came
From a great firm there—Belden and Carstairs,
Begging your father that some clerk he'd name
Acquainted with American affairs,

351

Trusty and shrewd, and send him out to them—
The kind of man they sought they thought he knew.
You know your father's way. He said—“Ahem!
‘Trusty and shrewd’—Byng, there's a chance for you.

“Belden is dead—Carstairs has kept the name
Of the old firm—he was its life's blood too—
Immensely rich, and if you play the game
You've played from boyhood, and be just and true
And diligent, and make his interest yours
As you have mine so long, you'll surely rise;
I hate to part with you; but this secures
A certain fortune. Take it, if you're wise.”

Byng took the advice; and then your father said—
“You'll need some money, Byng, and here's a draft;
Take it; a man can always hold his head
Higher with cash in hand.” And then he laughed.
“No thanks! 'Tis bread upon the waters thrown,
And may come back. If ever you be rich
Pay it to me or mine, or give some one
Who needs it sorely—'tis no matter which.”

I'll cut the story short. Byng made his way
There at Calcutta; all seemed cut and dried;
First, general manager; in a little day
The junior partner; when his senior died,
Became both his successor and his heir;
And recently, the lord of lac on lac
Of good rupees, selling his business there
For a round sum, came to his country back.

Here when he landed, judge of his surprise
To find his benefactor dead, the name
Of the old firm made loathly in men's eyes;
Its olden reputation brought to shame.

352

Well, sir, he bought its notes, and there they are—
I am John Byng—to save your house's fame
I bought them cent per cent—paid them at par—
There, sir, your fire's improved—they're in the flame.

What! crying like a child! Let go my hand;
I'm rich beyond compute. I only do
What I can well afford. Keep self-command;
Ruin has passed—a friend shall stand by you.
The house of Erbenstone and Son is saved;
The bread your father on the water cast
Comes after many years; the hour I've craved
When I could pay my debt, is here at last.

VINOGENESIS.

In this choice old Tokai—'tis the richest and rarest—
I drink to the dead who have vanished from sight;
The men who were bravest, the women the fairest,
Who died and have left me so lonely to-night.

There is frost on my beard; in my heart there is chillness;
My frame has the weakness of three score and ten;
But here in the solitude, calmness and stillness
The love of my youth comes before me again.

The eyes of deep azure, the broad, rippling tresses
With bright, liquid sunshine enhalo her head;
The curved, mobile mouth her emotion expresses;
The zephyr no softer than sound of her tread.

Who says she is dead, that the weeds and the briers
Have hidden her grave in the churchyard afar?

353

Such as she are immortal. Be silent, ye liars!
Can death slay the light or the air or a star?

Dead? No! She is living and loving and tender;
New-born from the mists of the earlier years;
Grace, beauty and virtue surround and defend her,
And the rapture I feel finds expression in tears.

We ramble again 'mid the oaks and the beeches;
We pluck from the branches the bright pinxter flowers;
We again interchange the same sweet, silly speeches,
And wonder why time has been stealing the hours.

Now we sit side by side in the fast growing twilight,
Not caring the sun from the world may depart;
No darkness appalls, for we see by the eyelight,
And bright to true lovers are eyes of the heart.

Our love is our riches, our splendor, our glory;
We dwell in a palace with joy for a guest;
What care we for those who are famous in story?
What care we who serves, or who reigns o'er the rest?

Ah, darling! one kiss as of old ere we parted!
She smiles on me kindly, and fades from my eye,
A dream and delusion. I sit here sad-hearted,
With nothing to cheer but this choice old Tokai.

ON THE STREAM.

Night, but no cloud in the sky;
And yonder the lights of the stream gleam and quiver
In a flame-spotted pyramid up from the river,
As I float in my boat so despairingly by
On the stream.

354

Quiet the ships at the piers;
Like a forest in winter, their masts and their spars
Stand in relief from the sky and the stars;
I can see them in spite of my fast-falling tears,
On the stream.

Creeping from wooden-walled slips,
I watch the filled ferry-boats ply to and fro,
Impatiently pawing the wave as they go,
Threading their way through the fast-anchored ships
On the stream.

In the far distance, I see
No light of a lamp from a window on shore;
That was her signal last summer—no more
Will that lamp through the pane cast a glimmer for me
On the stream.

Though as my life she was dear,
I could have borne it to think of her dead;
But deeper than that was the pang when she fled
Away with another—fled, leaving me here,
On the stream.

Sometimes they tell me I'm crazed;
God knows if I am; but I think not, although
I feel somewhat stunned with this dull, crushing blow;
I still keep my senses, though floating, amazed,
On the stream.

Floating half way from the shore—
Thus in my boat, in and out of the light,
I drift and I drift with my woe and the night,
Till the storm comes—and then, they will see me no more
On the stream.

355

THE OLD CHURCH-BELL.

Born of the metal and the fire,
They bore me from my raging sire,
And made me of the city's choir
Which sings in free air only;
And here since then I've patient hung,
Silent, untouched; but, being swung,
Giving my voice with iron tongue—
Alone, but never lonely.

The hermit of the belfry here,
Celled in the upper atmosphere,
I speak in accents stern and clear
To all the listening people;
With none my speech to check or mar,
Sending my utterance near and far,
With sonorous clang and sudden jar,
I shake the slender steeple.

I ring the chimes for the bridal day;
I toll when the dead are borne away;
I clang when the red flames rise and play
On crackling roof and rafter;
I tell the hours for the steady clock;
I call to prayers the pastor's flock;
And back and forth in my work I rock,
And sink to silence after.

Here by myself in belfry high,
Peeping through bars at earth and sky,
And mocking the breezes sweeping by,
And back their kisses flinging,

356

I chime for smiles, I toll for tears,
I herald news and hopes and fears,
As I have done for many years,
And never tire of ringing.

From place of vantage, looking down
On yellow lights and shadows brown
Which glint and tint the busy town
With hues that gleam and quiver,
I see within the streets below
The human currents crosswise flow,
Edying, surging to and fro,
An ever-living river.

And when the twilight slowly crawls
O'er slated roofs and bricken walls,
And darkness on the city falls,
And dews the flags besprinkle,
I watch the gloom around me creep,
So dense the silence, dense and deep,
The very highways seem to sleep,
But for the gaslights' twinkle.

Or day or night there meet my gaze
The sloping roofs, the crowded ways,
The meshes of a dreary maze
Where men are ever wending;
One day a rest for them may see—
One day in seven; but as for me,
No time from call of duty free,
My toil is never-ending.

I chime for birth or bridal train;
I toll when souls have burst their chain;
I clang when fire its ruddy rain
From clouds of smoke is flinging;

357

I chime for smiles; I toll for tears;
I herald news and hopes and fears;
And so shall do for many years,
And never tire of ringing.

OPTIMUS BROWN.

It strikes me this morning, friend Pessimus Green,
By your railing at mankind you're suffering with spleen;
The men, by your saying, are nothing but knaves,
The women, to fashion and folly are slaves;
One set are the biters, the others the bit,
And both are the mark of your cynical wit;
But banish a moment that sneer and that frown,
While I tell you the story of Optimus Brown.

This Optimus Brown, on a hot summer day,
I met in the street in his clothing of grey,
And while mopping his forehead, he said this to me—
“Quite genial weather! I like it, d'ye see?
It gives one such pleasure without and within;
It quickens the pulses, relaxes the skin,
Drives away from the mind every feeling of woe,
And makes both the plants and the animals grow.”

When next I encountered this Brown in the street,
He was merrily trudging with pattering feet,
But, stopping at sight of me, gleefully said—
“A day like to-day might awaken the dead.
This weather of autumn with dim, misty haze
Throws a veil of delight o'er the thorniest ways,
There isn't a season compares with the Fall;
And the month of November surpasses them all.”

358

Three months after that, in the coldest of weather,
Brown said, as we shivered in walking together,
With “ten below zero” keen piercing us through—
“I admire such fine weather as this is, don't you?
It better than tonics or stimulants serves
To brace up the body and strengthen the nerves;
It gives as much vigor as victuals and drink;
And we'll have a fine ice-crop this winter, I think.”

The last time I ran against Optimus Brown
The rain through his tattered umbrella came down,
And poured down his neck like the stream from a pump;
But he said—“How this weather'll make the plants jump!
The country around was in need of such showers
To forward the crops and to blossom the flowers;
And this moisture refreshes the body and brain—
There's nothing compares with a soft April rain!”

And Optimus treated his troubles the same,
And took at its best all misfortunes that came;
His friends were all true, and his foes—if he had 'em—
Were wayward connections, his kinsfolk through Adam,
Who would not wrong him, their relation, and hence
No cause to resent where he took no offense;
And, if clouds ever darkened his pathway at night,
He patiently waited for morning and light.

You may smile at old Optimus—laugh, if you please—
Who took each mishap when it came at its ease,
Regarded whatever occurred as the best,
And with whatever happened, believed he was blest;
Yet you'd better think much as Optimus thought,
And bring from each sorrow such joy as he brought,
Look at fortune as friend if she smile, or she frown,
And take the world easy like Optimus Brown.

359

THE BREAD SNATCHER.

For two whole days we had no food;
And dark, gigantic Want
Beside our cold hearth-stone sat down,
With Hunger grim and gaunt.

My wife and children made no moan,
Nor spoke a single word;
Yet in the chamber of my heart
Their hearts' complaint I heard.

Awearied by their sorrowing eyes,
I left the house of woe,
And on the dusty village street
I paced me to and fro.

I stopped me at the baker's shop,
Wherein my eyes could see
The great round loaves of wheaten bread
Look temptingly on me.

“My children shall not starve!” I cried—
The famine in me burned—
I slily snatched a loaf of bread,
When the baker's back was turned.

I hurried home with eager feet,
And there displayed my prize;
While joy, so long afar from us,
Came back and lit our eyes.

360

To fragments in our hunger fierce
That sweet, sweet loaf we tore;
And gathered afterwards the crumbs
From off the dusty floor.

While yet our mouths were full, there came
A knock which made us start;
I spoke not, yet I felt the blood
Grow thicker at my heart.

The latch was raised, and in there came
The neighbors with a din;
They said I stole the baker's bread,
Which was a grievous sin.

They took me to the Judge, who said
'Twas larceny—no less;
And doomed me to the gloomy jail
For wanton wickedness.

He asked me why the penalty
Of guilt should not be paid;
And when I strove to state the case,
He laughed at what I said.

Then growing grave he rated me,
And told me it was time
To check the vices of the poor,
And stop the spread of crime.

In jail for three long months I lay—
Three months of bitter woe—
And then they opened wide the door,
And told me I might go.

361

From out the prison I did not walk,
But ran with quivering feet,
Down through the hall and past the door,
And up the busy street.

My feet had scarce devoured ten rods
Of ground, before a hearse
Came slowly on with coffins three,
Each coffin with a corse.

I asked the driver as he sung,
Therein who might he bear;
He answered not, but stopped his voice,
And on me fixed a stare.

The one beside him turned his head,
And when the hearse had past,
I heard him to the other say—
“His brain is turned at last.”

I heeded not—I hastened home,
And entered in my door,
Where Silence like a snake crept out
And slimed along the floor.

Our old cat from the corner came
And crooked her back and cried;
I stooped me down and patted her,
And then I stood and sighed.

I left the house and sought the street—
My mind was growing wild;
And playing with a pile of dust
I saw a chubby child.

362

“Come hither, my little dear,” said I;
“Where did the people go,
Who lived within yon empty house,
Two years or nearly so?”

Straight answered then the little boy,
While I turned deadly pale—
“The man, sir, was a wicked thief,
They took him off to jail.

“The woman and children hid themselves;
They found them all to-day,
And in the gloomy poorhouse hearse
They carried them away.

“They say they never will come back,
Because the three are dead;
But wasn't that a wicked thing
For the man to steal the bread?”

THE SURGEON'S STORY.

Never again
While the clouds scatter rain,
And the green grass grows, and the great rivers run,
And the earth travels round the immovable sun,
And heaves with the tide the untamable sea,
Will she be but an object of hatred to me;
And never again will my pulses thrill
At the light of her smile, at her frown stand still,
As they thrilled or stilled in the by-gone days
When we thridded together the wild-wood ways.

363

False to her trust,
She is prone in the dust;
Her feeling and honor and troth-plight are sold
For velvets and laces and jewels and gold,
For a mansion of splendor, a withered old lord,
And a life where her soul by itself is abhorred;
But should ever, as may, in the day to come
To a terrible trouble her heart succumb,
In that moment of misery let her beware
Of the wretch she has doomed to a life of despair.

Such was the thought
From my agony wrought;
Such the resolve that my spirit controlled,
As I saw her one night with her husband old,
So haughtily poising her beautiful neck,
While worshippers waited her nod and beck;
But casting no thought to the lures and deceit
That had brought me abased on the earth at her feet;
And hiding from view, by her treacherous smile,
Her bosom of ice and her spirit of guile.

None in his wrath
May determine his path;
As years after I knew when on duty I passed
Through the hospital wards by the sufferers ghast—
(An engine had leapt from its track on the rail,
And these were the wounded ones, mangled and pale,)
Who waited and watched for my coming to know
Were they destined to stay with the living or go;
For one face of those faces alone I could see,
And the rest were but shadows of shadows to me.

364

There, in the bed,
Half-living, half-dead,
No remnant remaining of wealth that had been,
But, drawn around a form that was wasted and thin,
A calico gown, faded, tattered and old—
No velvets, no laces, no jewels, no gold;
Of the charms once so potent no token, nor trace,
But some grey hairs instead, sunken cheeks, pallid face;
And thus I beheld her when long years had flown,
Poor Claribel! dying, forsaken, and lone.

Faded away
As before me she lay,
The bitter resolve and the purpose of years,
And hatred was drowned in my pitying tears.
Was this, then, the end of her beauty and pride,
At whose feet I had knelt, for whose favor had sighed?
Was this dying woman, abandoned, forlorn,
The belle who had held all her rivals in scorn?
Wealth vanished, hope parted, her flatterers fled,
Eye glazing, pulse failing—a shiver—dead—dead.

Shrouded and cold,
As the solemn bell tolled,
We laid the poor wanderer down to her rest,
With a stone at her head, and the earth on her breast;
And never again while the clouds scatter rain,
While the winds sough through forest, or sweep over plain,
And the green grass grows, and the great rivers run,
And the earth travels round the immovable sun,
And heaves with the tide the untamable sea,
Will more than a memory of Claribel be.

365

RISEN FROM THE LAPSTONE.

“Risen from the lapstone”—this I heard them say
Of one a little richer than the rest;
They spoke the words in an admiring way,
As though among all good men he were best.
I sought the history of this honored man,
To profit by it; to my great surprise
I learned he had succeeded in a plan
To gather wealth by meanness, fraud and lies.

There was no trick of gain that he would shun;
There was no mean device he left untried,
If haply thus some profits might be won:
All which they told me with apparent pride.
They merely saw the gold the man had gained,
The stocks he owned, the lands he held in fee:
Nor were their coarser natures shocked or pained
By what the shirt of Nessus seemed to be.

“Risen from the lapstone”—others said the same,
And curled their lips, and gave a scornful leer,
As though the lapstone were a thing of shame,
The fitting subject for a bitter sneer.
Their scorn was for the honest trade at which
The man had ceaseless wrought in manhood's prime,
Not for the practices that made him rich:
Their sneer was for his calling, not his crime.

Gaining his wealth so vilely, did he rise?
What fool asserts it? When his hammer's clank
Spoke frequent from the lapstone, in our eyes
He could not well attain a higher rank;

366

But when through avarice he threw away
Good men's respect, became the slave of greed,
Pinched here, grasped yonder, crawling day by day—
We knew he found the lowest depth indeed.

Labor is honor. He who toils, creates,
And who creates above mere idlers stands;
He is a soft-brained fool who arrogates
Himself great credit for his stainless hands;
Yet he who riches wins by patient toil,
And honest thrift, and noble enterprise,
Keeping his spirit free from taint and soil,
Be he but modest, may be said to rise.

Labor has dignity. Kings held the plow
And deemed it honor. The incarnate God
Till middle manhood bathed his sacred brow
With labor's dew. And publish it abroad
That those who win immunity from toil
By petty tricks that hold the soul in thrall,
By meannesses that name and honor soil,
From their condition do not rise, but fall.

THE DYING CLERK.

I've had charge of the books, Maria, for forty-nine years and more;
I remember I made the first entries when we moved from the Pearl-street store.
In fact I grew up in the business: I swept out the place when a boy,
And climbed from one post to another, and never yet left their employ.

367

And how will they get on without me? They've no one to follow my plan:
That Morton'll muddle the journal; and Harris, he isn't the man.
Harris, indeed! why, I've known him since he was a slip of a lad!
And now he's a wild boy of thirty—he'll soon bring our books to the bad.

I've never been found in an error—I know that my books will compare
With any in South street this minute—in fact, with their books anywhere;
But the doctor says, errors excepted—and I have no doubt but he's right—
That my time's come to make trial balance, and close my account up to-night.

Now don't go to crying, Maria, for tears are a poor stock in hand,
And you're not left a beggar entirely you might just as well understand;
For here is the house that we live in, some bonds and some ready cash too.
Had he lived, 'twould have gone to your father; and now it'll all come to you.

Not talk at this moment of money! And why won't I talk of it, pray?
'Tis a very good thing, I can tell you, laid by for a cold, rainy day.
If you and that Robert must marry, you won't be a beggarly bride;
Young love is a good thing for young folk, but then you want money beside.

368

I'd rather you took up with Peter, for Peter's a much better man;
But when we can't get what we want to, we do the next best that we can.
And Robert is earnest and honest, and steady enough in his ways;
But Peter's the man to make money, and that is the thing now-a-days.

And Robert is not a neat penman—he somehow don't look far ahead;
He thinks of to-day when he ought to give thought to tomorrow instead.
He'll always have blots in his ledger—But grandfather's talk is in vain;
To Profit and Loss we must charge it—as they say—“Debit Loss, credit Gain.”

I'm not such an old man, Maria—but a little way past seventy-five;
There's Timothy Morris's brother, he's ninety, and he is alive;
And there is old Anthony Norton—he's somewhere about eighty-two,
And lively, they say, as a cricket; but then he's as rich as a Jew.

And so you will marry that Robert? Well, well, if you must have your way,
I hope that you'll never repent it—I know you'll be sure to, one day.
What! Robert! His pen always splutters; his books that I've seen are a show—
If Harris gets hold of the ledger, he'll tangle accounts there, I know.

369

Come, lift me up higher, Maria—it seems I slide down in the bed;
Then shake up the pillow a little—there's a lump there just under my head.
You'd better leave Robert for Peter—my eyes seem to flutter and swim—
That ugly mistake in the column—What makes the light—burn—there—so—dim?

THE CROWNLESS HAT.

It doubtless had been a respectable hat
That I saw on the edge of the sidewalk to-day,
Though crownless and battered and torn and all that;
And it certainly wasn't the least in my way.
But I reached where it lay with the end of my stick,
And carefully drew the old thing to my feet;
Then I stopped for a moment and gave it a kick,
And landed it out where they crossed o'er the street.

An elderly gentleman crossing just then,
Well-gloved, neatly booted, and clad in the best—
Apparent no courtlier man among men—
Couldn't let the old head-gear quiescently rest.
He peered through his gold-mounted spectacles down
At the fabric of plush I had tossed in his path;
He twisted his eye-brows of grey to a frown,
And he kicked it, with every appearance of wrath.

A delicate girl tripping early to school,
With lunch-box and satchel, came past where it lay;
She was thinking, no doubt, of some difficult rule,
Or conning the lesson set down for the day.

370

She paused for a moment—the hat met her eye—
She bent her head downward, her lip formed a curl;
She cast a quick glance to see no one was nigh,
Then with tip of her toe gave the old hat a whirl.

Some boys on their errand of mischief were bent,
All eager for what gave a promise of fun,
And as past with their whooping and shouting they went,
The hat crushed and torn met the vision of one.
“Ho! here's a football!” and upward it rose,
Propelled by the force of the little men's feet;
Till, trampled by shoe soles and dented by toes,
It soon found its way to the end of the street.

Meanwhile on the curb-stone there lay an old shoe;
It was rusty and weather-worn, twisted and ripped;
With a rent in the front where a toe had come through,
And a place where the sole from the welt had been stripped.
But no one disturbed it; it lay where 'twas thrown,
Though directly before every passenger's sight:
In kicking the hat was our energy shown,
And solely in that we expended our spite.

I puzzled my noddle a reason to find
Why the hat should be spurned and the shoe should escape;
But rejected the first one that came to my mind,
That the cause lay in relative softness and shape.
We pity the boor who is worn out by toil;
But we jeer at Napoleon now he is down:
The shoe was created to press on the soil;
The hat is degraded in losing its crown.

371

THE MERCHANT'S DREAM.

There, in his cobwebbed counting-room,
The iron safe before,
Where russet volumes tell the tale
Of millions made, or more,
The merchant, seated in his chair,
O'er which the sunlight streams,
In happy slumber wrapped, goes back
To childhood in his dreams.

Before his eyes the well-known farm,
The home of early years,
With fertile fields and meadows green,
As in the past, appears;
The low-roofed farm-house, painted white,
With drooping elms before,
The woodland and the running brook,
The shelving river-shore.

His coming through the old farm-gate
Provokes the watch-dog's bay,
But down the elmen avenue
He briskly takes his way.
Old Chloe to the kitchen door
Comes when the bark she hears,
Puts up her hands to shade her eyes,
And curious at him peers.

He stays a minute at the well,
He lets the bucket drop;
He hears the plash, he sees it fall,
He draws it to the top.

372

How clear and cool the crystal draught!
How pleasant to the lips!
Not sweeter is the honey-dew
In Paradise that drips!

The bars let down at yonder lane,
He strides the grassy way
Until he gains the old red barn,
With mossy roof and grey.
A boy again, he enters in
The huge, wide-open door;
He sees the piles of yellow sheaves,
He treads the threshing-floor.

There, loaded with its wheaten wealth,
Is driven the creaking wain;
There eager fowls came scurrying up
To pick the scattered grain.
He watches as the sheaves they store,
And from the stalls below
He hears the tramping of the steed,
The heifer's mournful low.

Then, wandering to the pasture-field,
The green, lush grass to tread,
He switches off the daisy-tips,
Or plucks the clover red.
The sky above is tinged with gold,
The sun untempered shines,
The air comes fragrant from the wood,
Balmy with breath of pines.

Hark! in the air a clang of bells!
It strikes the hour of four.
The merchant wakes to later days;
He is a boy no more.

373

To ships at sea and trade on shore,
To restless, grasping men,
To red brick rows and stony streets
His soul has come again.

THE ROSE AND SPARROW.

In yonder window a scented rose
In all its stately beauty grows;
Open its buds in a leatherny fold,
With a flush of cream on a base of gold;
The yellow-green of its mossy leaves
A tinge of blue from the sky receives;
And never, it seems, it so befell
For a rose to be tended half so well;
Yet a murmur ever from it goes,
And this is the plaint of the luckless rose:

“Here in thrall where my lady sits,
While yonder sparrow freely flits—
Here where the rushing crowd moves past,
A cruel fate has bound me fast,
Never the garden fair to know
Where my happy sisters bud and blow,
And painted butterflies come and go,
But doomed to waste my beauty rare
On the dusky city's smoky air.
What to me that my lady here
Holds me petted and sweet and dear—
Culls my buds for her hair of gold
As each were a gem of worth untold?
Better a wilder life would be,
To bloom in the garden fresh and free;

374

Better to pass one summer there,
And then to die in the wintry air,
Than live forever in cold confine
In this hateful dungeon-cell of mine.
I am sick of my lady's well-pleased gaze,
I am tired of my lady's winning ways,
I shrink from my lady's gentle touch—
Gaze, ways, and touch—they irk me much.”

In yonder street, with his pinions free,
A sparrow is flitting from curb to tree;
He twitters and chatters and hops and flies,
But casts above his envious eyes;
Pattering over the well-paved ground,
Careless is he of the crowd around;
Hither he comes, and thither he goes,
Yet still complains of the lucky rose:

“Pleasantly housed in his palace fair,
The pampered rose is devoid of care;
Evermore there in his gilded vase,
Part of the glories of the place;
Ever attended, night and morn,
While I in the street must flit forlorn
Through a crowd that pity and smile and scorn.
I am condemned my food to find
In the pelting rain and piercing wind,
Through sunlight blazing or chilling snow,
Wandering, homeless to and fro;
While he is watered and trimmed and nurst
As of all plants he were counted the first.
Ah! why in his palace of ease should he
By my gentle lady so tended be,
While I must wander and toil to gain
Some crumbs of bread, some scattering grain?

375

Oh that a gilded cage were mine,
With morsels of cake and sops of wine,
By loving looks and words carest,
In lieu of this life of wild unrest!
For the sparrow arise a thousand woes:
Happy the lot of the pampered rose.”

And thus in the world it ever goes,
Rose would be sparrow, and sparrow be rose;
Those who are captives would fain be free,
And those in freedom would captive be;
But, spite of longing and woe and pain,
Sparrow and rose they ever remain.

AT THE RIVER.

All gloom intense; no struggling star is here
To pierce the darkness of the midnight sky;
The pitchy river, moving sluggish by,
Beats sullenly against the rotting pier—
All else is silent.

Like ghosts the tall masts of the mighty ships
Show their dim outline through the dark profound;
From yonder spars, with sails securely bound,
The heavy mist, in drops condensing, drips
Constant and noiseless.

The damp my frame infiltrates, flakes my hair,
Presses my garments to my shivering form—
This is some roofless dungeon, walled with storm,
With horror barred; the jailer is Despair;
I the sole captive.

376

Naught moves around me; I alone have life;
But that is merely passive like the rest.
'Tis well it should be thus for one unblest,
Sinning and sinned against; mother, not wife;
Homeless and friendless.

Twelve little months have passed; in those how much
Of frenzied joy and bitter woe have been—
Of abject misery which was born of sin,
Ah! the sad truth—who, Sodom-apples touch
In their dust stifles.

Before me where methought I stood alone
A shadow darker than the darkness stands,
Above me lifting high its fleshless hands,
And ever echoes back my piteous moan,
Mocking my anguish.

Mock on, and take thy vengeance while thou canst;
I shall escape thee and thy wrath ere long;
But thou shalt not escape me and my wrong:
By my rash deed thy guilt is much enhanced
Rather than lessened.

For 'twas thy cold desertion nerved my hand
To right myself in sacrificing thee;
And through thy crime less guilt will cling to me
What time we twain unfleshed together stand
Waiting for judgment.

Left me for her! What was she more than I,
Who gave up all a maid may proudly claim,
Home, friends and honor, kinsfolk and good name,
At thy behest? 'Twas meet that thou shouldst die,
Being thus perjured.

377

Had she then beauty? Didst thou not declare
The rose and lily were combined in me—
My eyes twin stars? How fairer could she be,
When I had been the fairest of all fair,
In thy rapt vision?

Had she then wealth? That was the bait that took
Thee to thy ruin. Basely thou for gold
The heart that loved thee to this misery sold;
'Twas not the man I loved my dagger strook,
But one far baser.

Ah, me! And yet I loved thee as I slew;
I gazed on thee in love when thou wert dead;
I stooped and kissed thy cold lips ere I fled;
I had no power the cruel deed to do,
Save for my frenzy.

They've found thy corpse ere now, bathed in thy gore;
Let that be hers—the soul within is gone.
Gone! Whither? Where my own will go ere dawn,
Long ere my body floating seeks the shore
Of the black water.

Ha! voices! lights! What form the bloodhounds leads?
They'd hunt me down, urged by the raging wife.
She shall not triumph. What is left in life?
Forgive me, Father, for this worst of deeds—
Welcome me, river!

378

THE OLD MAN'S CHRISTMAS.

Why, let the wind whistle—who cares? Let it blow,
Driving hither and thither the flakes of the snow.
Let the wretches without, as they shivering pass,
Gaze with envy and hatred at me through the glass;
I am safe from the storm, with all men could desire,
A dinner of dainties, a hickory fire.
This luxury round me; all cheerful and bright;
And my sixtieth Christmas is with me to-night.

Wheel the chair around, William; the cloth take away;
Drop the curtains, and then light the taper—but stay—
Place the sherry in reach; put segars there at hand—
A dozen or so of my favorite brand.
You may go. Should I need you, the bell-rope will bring
Obedient to summons the slave of the ring:
I'm alone; but not lonely; unseen by this light,
There are guests from the past who are with me to-night.

First is Albert, my brother, the golden-haired one,
The pet of his mother, the youngest-born son.
He died on the ocean—the blue, swelling wave,
The home of his choice, at the last was his grave.
He comes as he went, with a frank, earnest gaze,
And he warms his wet frame in the bright, cheerful blaze.
Dead now twenty years, but his eyes are as bright—
No matter—you're welcome, dear brother, to-night.

There is Milton on whom I could ever depend,
Just less than a brother, and more than a friend—

379

Stout Milton, who died not a twelvemonth ago,
From his home in the churchyard wades here through the snow.
He comes to spend Christmas, as often before:
But less briskly than wont seems to enter the door.
What makes him so pulseless and pallid and white?
Cheer up; we'll be jolly together to-night.

Ah! Amy, my darling! ten years since we laid
Your body to rest in the cypress's shade.
And now you return to the husband who pressed
That sad night in anguish your form to his breast.
Come back on a visit? no! come to remain,
For I swear nothing ever shall part us again.
Thirty years since your eyes first cheered life with their light;
And yet you look younger than ever to-night.

What! Sybil, my daughter, have you too returned
To the father whose heart for you evermore yearned?
Has he whom you chose at the risk of my curse
Sent you back here to open the strings of my purse?
Why, you died through neglect of the husband who vowed
To cherish and love—died, despairing and proud.
Does the grave give you holiday? Would that it might,
And you were but living to sit here to-night.

All well-desired guests for the revel are near—
Wife, daughter, friend, brother—all risen and here.
Yet it seems to my judgment the sherry lacks taste,
The segar has no flavor—it all burns to waste;
The taper expires, and the gas-light sinks low;
The fire falls to embers—what troubles me so?
All here, no one missing—the list is not right;
One guest, and the greatest, is lacking to-night.

380

He enters at last. 'Tis a stranger to me,
So draped with dim shadows, so gaunt—who is he?
Sunk deep are his eyes, there is ice in his breath—
A guest most unwelcome! I know him—'tis Death.
Unwelcome? Not so! Most desired of them all.
His skeleton foot has a musical fall;
His shadows have changed to a halo of light—
Best friend and deliverer, welcome to-night.

SMITING THE ROCK.

The stern old judge, in relentless mood,
Glanced at the two who before him stood—
She was bowed and haggard and old,
He was young and defiant and bold—
Mother and son; and to gaze at the pair,
Their different attitudes, look and air,
One would believe, ere the truth were won,
The mother convicted, and not the son.

There was the mother; the boy stood nigh
With a shameless look, and his head held high.
Age had come over her, sorrow and care;
These mattered but little so he was there,
A prop to her years and a light to her eyes,
And prized as only a mother can prize;
But what for him could a mother say,
Waiting his doom on the sentence-day?

Her husband had died in his shame and sin;
And she, a widow, her living to win,
Had toiled and struggled from morn to night,
Making with want a wearisome fight,

381

Bent over her work with a resolute zeal,
Till she felt her old frame totter and reel,
Her weak limbs tremble, her eyes grow dim;
But she had her boy, and she toiled for him.

And he—he stood in the criminal dock,
With a heart as hard as the flinty rock,
An impudent glance and reckless air.
Braving the scorn of the gazers there;
Dipped in crime and encompassed round
With proofs of his guilt by his captors found,
Ready to stand, as he phrased it, “game,”
Holding not crime, but penitence, shame.

Poured in a flood o'er the mother's cheek
The moistening prayers where the tongue was weak,
And she saw through the mist of those bitter tears
Only the child in his innocent years;
She remembered him pure as a child might be,
The guilt of the present she could not see;
And for mercy her wistful looks made prayer
To the stern old judge in his cushioned chair.

“Woman,” the old judge crabbily said—
“Your boy is the neighborhood's plague and dread;
Of a gang of reprobates chosen chief;
An idler and rioter, ruffian and thief.
The jury did right, for the facts were plain;
Denial is idle, excuses are vain.
The sentence the court imposes is one—”
“Your honor,” she cried, “he's my only son.”

The tipstaves grinned at the words she spoke,
And a ripple of fun through the court-room broke;

382

But over the face of the culprit came
An angry look and a shadow of shame.
“Don't laugh at my mother!” loud cried he;
“You've got me fast, and can deal with me;
But she's too good for your coward jeers,
And I'll—” then his utterance choked with tears.

The judge for a moment bent his head,
And looked at him keenly, and then he said—
“We suspend the sentence—the boy can go;”
And the words were tremulous, forced and low.
“But stay!” and he raised his finger then—
“Don't let them bring you hither again.
There is something good in you yet, I know;
I'll give you a chance—make the most of it—Go!”

The twain went forth, and the old judge said—
“I meant to have given him a year instead;
And perhaps 'tis a difficult thing to tell
If clemency here be ill or well.
But a rock was struck in that callous heart
From which a fountain of good may start;
For one on the ocean of crime long tossed
Who loves his mother, is not quite lost.”

THE NIGHT BEFORE.

I sneered when I heard the old priest complain,
That the doomed seemed voiceless and dull of brain;
For why should the felon be other than dumb
As he stands at the gate of the world to come?
Let them lock up his Reverence here in the cell,

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Waiting the sound of the morning bell
That heralds his dying and tolls his knell,
And the tick-tock
Of the great jail clock
Will attract him more than the holiest prayer
That ever was mingled with dungeon air.

Will it never be morning—never arise
The great red sun in the cold grey skies,
Thrusting its rays in my iron-barred cell,
And lighting the city I know so well?
Is this horrible night forever to be—
The phantom I feel, though I cannot see—
Is that to be ever alone with me?
Will the tick-tock
Of the ceaseless clock
Beat forever through brain and heart
Till the tortured soul from the body part?

And now in the darkness surrounding me
A hundred figures I plainly see;
And there are my mother's pitying eyes—
Why does she from her grave arise?
And there, on the crowd's extremest rim—
Gashed of throat, and supple of limb—
Why, what do I want to-day with him?
To the tick-tock
Of the pitiless clock
His body is swaying, slowly and free,
While his shadowy finger points at me.

Will it never be here—the dawn of the day,
When the law is to carry my life away;
And the gaping crowd, with their pitiless eyes,
Stand eager to see how the doomed one dies?

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Nothing to scatter the terrible gloom
That fills up the arched and the grated room;
Nothing to herald the hour of doom
But the tick-tock
Of the weariless clock,
And the tread of the tired policeman's feet
As he steadily paces the echoing street?

At last the deep darkness is melting away
At the corpse-like light on the face of the day;
I hear the prisoners move in their cells,
I hear the chiming of morning bells,
The rattle of carts in the streets once more,
The careful tread on the stony floor
Of the sheriff, who comes to the grated door,
And the tick-tock
Of the great jail clock,
And the whispered words of the keepers around,
And every whisper a thunder-sound.

What mocking is this in the formal demand,
In the mighty name of the law of the land,
For the body of him who is doomed to die
In the face of men, and beneath the sky?
I am safe in your thrall, but pinion me well;
I might be desperate—who can tell?—
As I march to the sound of the clanging bell,
The tick-tock
Of the great jail clock,
And the voice of the priest as he mumbles a prayer,
And the voices that murmur around me there.

385

THE WIDOW'S CHRISTMAS.

This is the day of Christmas; but how can we merry be—
Harry who lies on the bed there, and the baby on my knee?
How can we three be merry, whatever our hearts desire,
While Harry, my boy, is dying, and we have no food nor fire?

This is the day of Christmas, the blessedest day of the year,
And when it last fell my husband he was alive and here;
And Harry was stout and hearty, and the baby was yet unborn—
One is dead, another is dying, and life is a state forlorn.

This is the day of Christmas; this morning at break of day
I heard the chimes in the steeples, with the bells in silvery play.
Cheery they were to some folk; to me their sound was a knell,
And I heard the moaning of anguish in the voice of each chiming bell.

This is the day of Christmas; but a year ago, my boy,
You awoke when the dawn was breaking, and gave such a shout of joy,
And you blessed the good St. Nicholas who brought a drum and gun,
And a fairy-book with pictures for your father's only son.

This is the day of Christmas; to think in less than a year
Your father should be in the graveyard, and you a poor cripple here;

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No food the body to cherish, nor fire the body to warm,
And rags, and those but scanty, to cover each shivering form.

This is the day of Christmas, when our Lord a babe was born
And laid to rest in a manger with brutes of the hoof and horn;
And the angels at His birth hour sang sweetly, telling then
Of peace on the earth around us to all good-willing men.

This is the day of Christmas; and what must I have done
That peace is no longer my portion, nor strength for my little son?
Is it wonderful that I murmur while here, with my want and woe,
I can hear the joyous voices arise from the street below?

This is the day of Christmas; when yesterday at four
I went for my scanty wages, I found me a barred-up door;
They had gone to prepare for feasting, and so the better they may,
We three must suffer with hunger, and shiver with cold to-day.

This is the day of Christmas; but keep a good heart, my son;
To-morrow the shop will open; your trouble will soon be done.
They'll pay the wages they owe me, and we'll have some meat and bread,
And coal and—speak to me, darling! God help me!—my boy is dead!

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THE OLD MAN'S DAY-DREAM.

Here, in this brick-waste where the dingy houses
Hold their grim guard along the stony ways,
Where brazen-fronted wrong weak wrath arouses,
And honor mainly triumphs when it pays,
I sit and listen at my curtained casement
To jarring noises in the busy street,
Until their discord to my dumb amazement,
Changes to something musically sweet.

The lowing of the kine, the bell that tinkles
Amid the flock that grazes on the hill,
The roaring of the dam whose spray besprinkles
The mossy stones beside the grey old mill,
The cry which shows the hawk's vexation bitter
As, poised in air, his shielded prey he sees,
The cat-bird's cry, the swallow's ceaseless twitter,
The blue jay's chatter, and the drone of bees.

High overhead the elm's long, tremulous branches
Move to the metre of the rustling leaves;
There the old house-dog, resting on his haunches,
Watches the reapers as they bind the sheaves.
There the sleek horses on their brown bits champing,
Impatient wait the loading of the wain,
And there the children, wearied with their tramping,
Ask for a homeward ride upon the grain.

Here is the house, low nestled in the valley,
With gambrel-roof, low porch and sanded floor,
Where moonlight nights at parting I would dally,
And speak low words to Alice at the door.

388

How her dear voice with fond emotion filled me,
Till tingled with the rapture nerve and brain,
And so with its excess of pleasure thrilled me
That ecstasy intensified to pain.

There is the old church with its wooden steeple,
Near it the horses hitched to pendent limbs;
And from it float the voices of the people
Praising their Maker with their simple hymns.
Ah! in the churchyard lying there behind it
A stone is found with moss half covered o'er;
You part aside the rankling weeds to find it—
“Alice” is carven there, and nothing more.

KING THREAD.

Through the great pile of bricks that, uptowering,
Looks over the river in pride,
And, sombre in aspect, stands glowering
Half sullenly over the tide,
I climb floor by floor, where each rafter
Leans over the hum of the hive,
And the spindles, whose murmurous laughter
Greets the bees as they toil there and thrive.

Then down through each chamber of labor
Where steady each factory girl,
Unheeding the work of her neighbor,
Keeps her own watch and ward o'er the whirl,
Where the toilers of Adam begotten,
Through the doom of their race earn their bread,
I see how from tortured King Cotton
Arises the monarch, King Thread.

389

Yellow-robed and impassive they found him,
This Cotton, just burst from his boll;
They caught him, and caged him, and bound him,
And took o'er his being control.
To the picker in triumph they bore him,
Where he made neither murmur nor plaint,
But there, while to fragments they tore him,
Endured like a martyr and saint.

From all baser matter they freed him;
They carried him down to the room
Where he'd learn what his fortune decreed him,
If doomed to the needle or loom—
To the lady who sways o'er the many,
To whom kings and emperors bow,
The dame whom we called Spinning Jenny—
They style her the Twisting Frame now.

Ah! she is a wonderful creature,
As weird and attractive as sin;
Noted less for her beauty of feature
Than dexterity fibre to spin;
And with her untiring steel fingers,
Beginning at dawn of the day,
She never through lassitude lingers,
But toils in the cheeriest way.

Coquettish, she waits for his coming,
Elbows crooked—“flies,” she calls them—she twirls,
Pirouettes with a low, cheerful humming,
And drags him along in her whirls.
He abandons all useless endeavor,
To the mouth of the whirlpool he goes,
And in straw-colored torrent forever
He flows and he flows and he flows.

390

Then tortured and bound, and unable
To resistance oppose to their will,
He is borne to the place where they stable
The docilest mule in the mill;
And there, in a cop on the spindle,
They twist him through all of his length,
Till he feels his circumference dwindle,
But gains by compression new strength.

They double him spite of resisting,
They grip him with fingers of steel;
They give him a fierce triple twisting,
And stretch him around on the reel.
Then they bleach him to rare snowy whiteness
Blow light azure clouds on his head,
And enthrone him in splendor and brightness,
To live and to rule as King Thread.

Now whether in chamber or palace
Their needles they busily ply,
Low houses in dark narrow alleys,
Or mansions pretentious and high,
The belle who is sewing for pleasure,
The girl who is stitching for bread,
As their time they monotonous measure,
Mourn not for King Cotton as dead.

For shattered and carded and tightened,
And twisted by jenny and mule,
And doubled and trebled and whitened,
And bound there and tied to a spool,
He is freed from his first imperfection,
All his baseness is purged by his pain;
He appears, in a grand resurrection,
King Thread, o'er the millions to reign.

391

THE DEFECTIVE NAIL.

I looked at a carpenter nailing one day
Some weatherboards on in a workmanlike way,
And saw that the claw of the hammer he clapped
To a nail which the moment before he had tapped,
And, drawing it out, threw it by with a jerk,
Took another instead and went on with his work.

“What's that for?” I asked him. “Have nails grown so cheap
That you toss them away as too worthless to keep?”
“No,” he answered, “it bent in the driving, and so,
Lest it make a bad job, to the ground it must go.
We draw while we're able,” he said, with a grin,
“For we can't pull it out, once we hammer it in.”

When the nail had been followed by one that was good,
I noticed beside it a dent in the wood—
The mark had been made by the base of the claw
Through the strong force exerted the bent nail to draw;
And there the depression, to eyesight quite plain,
Though twice painted over will doubtless remain.

No marvellous incident certainly; still
It set me to thinking, as little things will,
How habits, like nails, be they wrong ones or right,
Can't be drawn from their places when hammered in tight;
And, though drawn ere they sink to the head, leave behind
By their drawing, some traces on body and mind.

When a young man seeks money and nothing beside,
And, quoting Ben. Franklin, his meanness to hide,

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Does small things for pelf, and with muck-rake in hand,
Shuns the crown overhead, petty gains to command,
Though it end in that wealth he is anxious to win,
He has struck a bent nail, and has hammered it in.

When a dashing young man at the outset of life,
Who has won some pure maiden and made her his wife,
Leaves his home and his wife for some low, murky den,
Where he drinks and carouses with dissolute men,
The nail he is driving may crooken to sin;
Better pull it out quickly, not hammer it in.

When some neighbor of those sees their faults through a glass
That makes them too large for the censor to pass,
And, with sense of their wickedness, righteously hot,
Calls one a mere miser, the other a sot—
He is handling a nail that is not worth a pin;
Like a corkscrew 'twill twist if he hammer it in.

When a girl shows the world that she surely thinks less
Of her culture and conduct than gadding and dress;
When she eagerly seeks for a confab with those
Whose talk solely runs upon dresses and beaux,
Neglecting home duties some street-yarn to spin—
That nail will give trouble if once hammered in.

When a wife finds her temper grow peevish and sour,
And the tones that once charmed her have lost all their power;
When she scolds till her husband, in fury and pain,
Like a fool seeks in whiskey oblivion to gain—
'Twere better by far did she never begin
To tap on that nail, much less hammer it in.

393

When some woman—wife, widow, or spinster the same—
Too eager to blow the dull coals to a flame,
The faults of her sisters brings closer to view,
Calling this one street-gadder, and that one a shrew,
Her nail has a flaw, is ill-shapen and thin,
As she'll find to her cost when she hammers it in.

Enough for the lesson. The nails that we drive,
Not through boards that are pulseless, but frames that are live,
Examine them well, closely scan ere too late;
Should they prove of firm metal, well-cut, and quite straight,
Regardless of sneering, or clamor, or din,
Place each where it should be, and hammer it in.

HERE AND THERE.

From its snood fell one of her tresses
To the side of her snowy neck,
Where jewels of price and laces
Her delicate throat bedeck,
As she swept with garments trailing
The carpeted floor that night,
Through the wide and lofty parlors,
In the bright and glaring light.
And she was a beautiful lady
As ever the eye might see,
With a dainty step and modest,
And a manner both frank and free;
And the lovers who gathered around her,
And strove for her favor there,
For a smile, or a glance of kindness,
Were ready to do or dare.

394

But, when the guests departed,
The lady, so courted and blest,
Ascended the stairs to her chamber
That wooed her to pleasant rest.
Disrobed, at the bedside kneeling,
She prayed that the Christ who died
Might her from all ill deliver
And the snares of earthly pride.

Another, alone in her garret,
So chilly and dreary and damp,
Slow plying her busy needle,
By the light of a glimmering lamp,
Haggard of look and weary,
And scantily clad and fed,
With the past a hopeless struggle
And hope for the future dead.
There stood on the rickety table
Remains of the poor repast—
The meal that labor had brought her—
And each was the same as the last.
Breakfast and dinner and supper
Alike on the board were spread,
And her bread and tea were followed
By a diet of tea and bread.
Far down in the midnight sombre
She nodded and stitched away,
Then snatched some hours of slumber,
To be up at the morning grey.
But ere she sank on her pallet
She thanked the Giver of Good,
Who had blest her weary labor
With shelter and rest and food.

A year had passed, and the mourners
Bore slow to her place of rest

395

The lady whom kindly fortune
With beauty and wealth had blest;
And there at the churchyard portals
A funeral entered in
Of the seamstress poor who struggled
Her needs of life to win.
One borne in a rosewood casket,
With many a nodding plume,
With a lengthened train of coaches
And the pomp of grief and gloom;
And one, by a few attended,
In a coffin of pine was brought;
And both lay down in the chambers
By the spade and mattock wrought.
But ere those bodies were buried,
And the clay to clay was given,
Two fleshless forms soared upward
And met at the gate of Heaven.
Freed of the flesh those spirits
And purged of all earthly sin,
What mattered their once condition,
As to glory they entered in?

OUT IN THE STREETS.

The light is shining through the window-pane;
It is a laughing group that side the glass.
Within, all light; without, pitch-dark and rain:
I see, but feel no pleasure as I pass,
Out in the streets.

Another casement, with the curtain drawn;
There the light throws the shadow of a form—

396

A woman's, with a child—a man's: all gone!
They with each other. I am with the storm,
Out in the streets.

There at the open window sits a man,
His day's toil over, with his pipe alight;
His wife leans o'er him, with her tale began
Of the day's doings. I am with the night,
Out in the streets.

All these have homes and hope, and light and cheer,
And those around who love them. Ah for me!
Who have no home, but wander sadly here,
Alone with night and storm and misery,
Out in the streets.

The rain soaks through my clothing to the skin;
So let it. Curses on that cheery light!
There is no light with me and shame and sin;
I wander in the night and of the night,
Out in the streets.

You who betrayed me with a loving kiss,
Whose very touch could thrill me through and through,
When you first sought me, did you think of this?
My curse. ... But why waste time in cursing you
Out in the streets?

You are beyond my hatred now. You stand
Above reproach; you know no wrong nor guile;
Foremost among the worthies of the land,
You are all good, and I a wretch all vile,
Out in the streets.

You have a daughter, young and innocent;
You love her, doubtless. I was pure as she

397

Before my heart to be your lackey went.
God guard her! Never let her roam, like me,
Out in the streets.

I was a father's darling long ago;
'Twas well he died before my babe was born;
And that's dead too—some comfort in my woe!
Wet, cold, and hungered, homeless, sick, forlorn,
Out in the streets.

How the cold rain benumbs my weary limbs!
What makes the pavement heave? Ah! wet and chill,
I hear the little children singing hymns
In the village church: how peaceful now and still
Out in the streets.

But why this vision of my early days?
Why comes the church-door in the public way?
Hence with this mocking sound of prayer and praise!
I have no cause to praise, I dare not pray,
Out in the streets.

What change is here? The night again grows warm;
The air is fragrant as an infant's breath.
Why, where's my hunger? Left me in the storm?
Now, God forgive my sins! this, this is death,
Out in the streets.

THE SHOEMAKER'S DAUGHTER.

Yesternight, as I sat with an old friend of mine,
In his library, cosily over our wine,
Looking out on the guests in the parlor, I said,
Of a lady whose shoe showed some ripping of thread,
“Frank, she looks like a shoemaker's daughter.”

398

“Yes,” said Frank, “yes; her shoe has a rip at the side,
The mishap of the moment—the lady's a bride.
That reminds me of something; and here as we sit,
If you'll listen with patience, I'll spin you a bit
Of a yarn of a shoemaker's daughter.

“When I was a boy, half a century since—
How one's frame, as one numbers the years, seems to wince!—
A dear little girl went to school with me then;
As I sit in my arm-chair I see her again—
Kitty Mallet, the shoemaker's daughter.

“Whence the wonderful ease in her manner she had,
Not from termagant mother nor hard-working dad.
Yet no doubt that, besides a most beautiful face,
The child had decorum, refinement, and grace,
Not at all like a shoemaker's daughter.

“Her dress was of sixpenny print, but 'twas clean;
Her shoes, like all shoemakers' children's, were mean;
Her bonnet a wreck; but, whatever she wore,
The air of a damsel of breeding she bore—
Not that of a shoemaker's daughter.

“The girls of the school, when she entered the place,
Pinched each other, then tittered and stared in her face.
She heeded no insult, no notice she took,
But quietly settled herself to her book;
She meant business, that shoemaker's daughter.

“Still jeered at by idler and dullhead and fool,
A hermitess she in the crowd of the school:
There was wonder, indeed, when it soon came to pass
That ‘Calico Kitty’ was head of the class.
‘What, Kitty, that shoemaker's daughter!’

399

“Still wearing the same faded calico dress,
And calm, as before, in the pride of success;
Her manner the same, easy, soft, and refined,
'Twas she seemed an heiress, while each left behind
In the race was a shoemaker's daughter.

“Bit by bit all her schoolmates she won to her side,
To rejoice in her triumph, be proud in her pride,
And I with the rest. I felt elderly then,
For I was sixteen, while the lass was but ten;
So I petted the shoemaker's daughter.

“Do you see that old lady with calm, placid face?
Time touches her beauty, but leaves all her grace.
Do you notice the murmurs that hush when she stirs,
And the honor and homage so pointedly hers?
That's my wife, sir, the shoemaker's daughter!”

LITTLE MADGE'S WINDOW-GARDEN.

When lying at night on a couch of pain,
'Tis strange how each trivial thing
Will often, with clasp like the ivy's grasp,
To an old man's memory cling!
And here as I lie with the nurse asleep,
And the chamber quiet and still,
My mind brings back from a score of years
Little Madge and her window-sill.

Right back of my room was a tenement-house;
On a level my eyes could see,
As after my dinner I took my smoke,
A sight that was pleasant to me.

400

A weakling child with a pallid face—
A little bit lame she seemed—
Who bent o'er a treasure of treasures to her,
Like one who in asking dreamed.

A garden it was on a window-sill,
The queerest that ever was seen—
Three plants in some battered tomato-cans,
And never a one was green.
Yet she looked at them all so lovingly there,
And watered and tended them so,
I knew she was filled with an earnest hope
That the withered old sticks would grow.

My interest heightened as every day
The child to the window-sill came,
The twigs still shriveled and void of life,
Though she tended them all the same;
Till I well remember one beautiful morn
How a look sympathetic I cast,
When I heard her exclaim to her mother within
That a bud made a showing at last.

“'Tis the easiest thing for a well-to-do man
When 'twill pleasure a poor sickly child,
To give her a beautiful plant to tend”—
I said to myself, and I smiled.
So straightway I ordered a florist to send
A double geranium fine
To the little lame girl in the tenement-house,
But not as a present of mine.

And after my dinner was over next day,
To my window I went to see,
And there my double geranium stood
To the right of her withered three.

401

There, gazing in pride on its blossoms of red,
The pale little girl bending o'er,
Looked as though she had come to good fortune at last,
With nothing to look for more.

Sometimes on a Sunday a bearded man,
With a pipe in his mouth a-light,
Would stand at her shoulder and something say
To show he was pleased at the sight.
But I felt quite sure in my innermost heart,
And the thought set my pulses astir,
That less did he care for the fine, showy flower,
Than the pleasure it gave unto her.

How she showered the dust from its emerald leaves!
And oh! with what perfect delight,
She watched as the tiny and wonderful buds
Their petals unfolded to sight!
And when she coquettishly turned round her head,
And looked at her treasure and smiled,
I thought of how little 'twould cost to the rich
To pleasure some innocent child.

On a tour for the summer I started away,
And my business cares left behind;
The pleasure of travel soon drove every trace
Of the tenement child from my mind;
But when I returned to the city at last,
In my heart was an ominous thrill,
When I looked from my window when dinner was done
At the opposite window-sill.

The geranium stood in its place of pride;
The other three plants had leaved;
A wan little woman in black was there,
With the face of a woman that grieved.

402

The bearded man I had seen before,
When something the woman had said,
Looked down on the plants with a vacant air,
And mournfully nodded his head.

I soon learned the name of the child they had lost,
I found where her body it lay,
With a low wooden cross at the head of the grave,
And the green turf over the clay.
And somehow, it soothes me a little to-night,
Although such a trivial thing,
That I planted each year a geranium
At her head in the days of the spring.

THE DARK LANE.

In a dark lane of yonder crowded city,
Lampless and silent all the gloomy night,
What deeds devoid of godliness and pity
Are done in absence of the tell-tale light.

Here, too worn-out to push his journey further,
Lies down the beggar in his garments mean;
Here, in a dark recess, lurks brutal Murther,
Watching its purposed prey with vision keen.

Yon house you see is now a tottering shelter
For wretched people packed its rooms within—
Folk who in winter freeze, in summer swelter,
Frequent in want and evermore in sin.

The house was once a mansion, where the stately
And silk-robed damsels of an early day

403

Swept through its lofty drawing-room sedately,
With cavaliers as elegant as they.

Then 'twas a family's country mansion splendid:
Shaded by elms the serpentine approach
Wherein, by liveried lackeys still attended,
By prancing horses drawn, came coach on coach.

Soon spread the suburbs of the town, and swallowed
The grand approach and all the garden round;
A narrow lane, close built with houses followed,
As rose in costliness surrounding ground.

There dwelt alone, save with his hoards, a miser—
A wretch who lived to hoard where others spend;
He had more gold than some who thought them wiser;
He had a son; but then he had no friend.

The boy was spendthrift—worst of all offences!
Not to be cured, though theft or lying might;
And lest his habits might entail expenses,
He drove him from the house one winter night.

No more returned the boy—if dead, or living,
Was never to his old companions known;
And there as sordid, cold, and unforgiving
As at the first, the father dwelt alone.

Years past away. One night in cold December
The miser bent him o'er the chilly grate;
There was no heat there—cold was every ember—
When from the darkness came the old man's fate.

Days after that they found him, dead and ghastly,
But not from cold. His skull was cleft in twain;

404

But, strange to say, and all men wondered vastly,
His gold was gone—none saw those hoards again.

And now the inmates, never heaven fearing,
Shake at the noises sounding in its walls
On one night in the year, as on their hearing,
Clear and distinct, a piteous moaning falls.

Brutes though they be, at that they shake and quiver,
And feel the heart within them waxing chill,
As, with a shriek that makes each hearer shiver,
That piteous moaning ends, and all is still.

Who was the assassin? In that city crowded
His trace was never found in street or lane;
And the son's fate in mystery is enshrouded,
The murderer and the son—where are the twain?

In a dark lane of yonder crowded city,
Lampless and silent all the gloomy night,
Such deeds, devoid of godliness and pity,
Are done in absence of the tell-tale light.

TAKE A FRESH HOLD.

Out in the orchard two boys were trying
If they could rise to a limb breast-high;
Up went the younger, but dropped the other,
Shame at his failure dimming his eye.
Looked at him quickly the smaller in wonder,
Scorning a little the quivering lip,
Asking: “What's up, and why couldn't you do it?”
Answered his comrade: “I lost my grip.”

405

Rudely and knowingly spake the younger—
He was a sage with years just ten—
“Lost your grip, have you? What if you've lost it?
Take a fresh hold, and try it again.”

Young philosopher, pert and fearless,
Facing the moment and filled with force,
Old-time Greek in your style and manner,
Made for doing, strong, rugged and coarse,
Scorn of the weakness whose grip relaxes,
If it once fail the top to attain,
Yet may bring you to any station
Young ambition may seek to gain,
Words you have spoken, though rude and common,
Furnish a lesson to bearded men,
Telling them, after every failure:
“Take a fresh hold, and try it again.”

There is the spirit which makes Columbus
Travel through many a land to Spain;
Spurned by one monarch, he sues to another,
Keeping his purpose through want and pain.
Proud success in the far-off future,
Realms unknown in the west he sees:
Monk and noble cannot dissuade him;
Courage is stronger than words of these.
Driven away with jeers and laughter;
Branded with heresy, scorned of men;
Losing his grip, nor fears nor falters,
Takes a fresh hold and tries it again.

Such was the lesson that Bruce, the kingly,
Sovereign of whom the Scotsmen boast,
Caught from a sight in the grim old castle,
Out in Rathlin, on the Irish coast.

406

Overburdened, the toiling spider
Six times striving the wall to ascend,
Losing her grip, but nowise undaunted,
Found her triumph achieved in the end.
Sick with his failure, the sight aroused him;
Forth he went to the battle then;
Firm of heart through the spider's teaching,
Took a fresh hold and tried it again.

Man of the present, example homely
Surely it is better than none at all;
If you would stand on the height above you,
Climb once more when you chance to fall.
Feel no fear if you fail for the moment,
Time and patience will carry the day;
Weighted with poverty, met by rivals,
Trying and trying will win their way.
Clouded the heavens your pathway over,
Rising around you the jeers of men,
Stop not for bruises; at every tumble
Take a fresh hold and try it again.

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THE BUILDER'S STORY.