The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

There was a pathos in it, friend,
Though you might smile, as I did too,
To see that pile of manuscript
So strangely from its old trunk crypt
Brought suddenly to view.

Ah! there are things in this strange life,
Which move us unto mirth, and yet
Behind the laughter there are tears,
And thoughts which in the after years,
Bring touches of regret.

And oft it is an accident
Whether you chance to laugh or weep,
But when you call it back again,
The laughter has a twinge of pain
Which haunts you in your sleep.

He was a poor dull-plodding man,
So poor he kept not even a bird
To cheer his solitude by song,
And voice for him the silent throng
Of thoughts that find no word.

Nor dog, nor cat, nor bird had he,
Nor wife nor child had ever come
To share the burden of his lot,
Which he endured, and murmured not,
In quiet patience dumb.

And now he lay there cold and dead,
And none had watched to see him die;
Alone he had lived all his days,
Alone he passed from human ways
Beneath the All-seeing eye.

There was a little loaf of bread—
He had not died of hunger then—
A little fuel too, and oil,
And water in a can to boil
If day should come again.

Which never came; and when we sought
Through press and drawers for aught to give
Him decent burial with the dead,
As he had always held his head
'Mong them that decent live,

344

Nor gold nor silver there was found,
Nor plack nor penny; life had gone
Just as the little purse was spent,
Which lately had no increment
From work that he had done.

It had just lasted out his time
Through careful scrimping day by day;
He had no debt, he had no kin,
And there was nought to lose or win,
When thus he went his way.

But for the money, vainly sought,
In a moth-eaten trunk we found
A mass of manuscripts—a pile
Of papers writ in careful style,
Some loose, some rudely bound.

Strange gatherings! scraps of every kind,
Backs of old letters, envelopes,
Half-used account books, paper bags
Picked up among the ash and rags
And refuse of the shops:

And every tattered scrap close writ
With pen or pencil, as 'twould bear,
With verses on a hundred themes,
With pious arguments and dreams,
All rhymed with patient care.

Oh no; he had no message, none,
To wise or foolish, good or bad;
No prophet's burden-word he bore,
Which he must speak; and what is more,
He never thought he had.

A silent soul, he went about
His daily task, and every night
Back to his dingy attic came,
Nor dreamed about the coming fame
Or setting this world right.

None ever heard him hint a thought
Of fancied greatness; never line
Of his competed for a place
In corners which small poets grace;
He bottled it like wine.

But when his fellow-labourers met
With pipe and tankard at the inn,
He to his attic would retire,
And trim his lamp, and light his fire,
And pen his verses thin;

And lived unto a good old age,
And never begged a bit of bread,
And cheered his loneliness with these
Bald rhymes about the birds and trees,
And living men and dead.

There is no sacred fire in them,
Nor much of homely sense and shrewd;
Imperfect lines, imperfect rhymes,
False quantities, mistaken chimes,
Yet all the feeling good.

There is no envy of the great,
There's praise of patriot and saint;
If now the story have no point,
The reasoning now be out of joint,
There is no vain complaint.

Hard toil it was for that hard hand
To hammer out these limping lines,
Harder than handling spade or hod,
Or trenching ditch, or delving sod,
Or picking in dark mines.

Yet night by night he must have writ
His verse or two for forty years,
Long poems some, some meant for songs,
Some voiced the common people's wrongs,
Some breathed his own sad fears.

But none had ever heard him say
How the long evening hours were spent;
He never showed the rhymes he writ,
Nor tried to see their clumsy wit
How it might look in print.

345

Enough for him the silent task,
Enough to read the abortive rhyme,
Now pleased with this, now touched with that,
He knew not why; he knew not what
Was pathos, or sublime.

Strange passion! thus to jingle words,
And hide them in a big old chest!
'Twas but some hours before he died
The last was written, and beside
The rest in order placed.

Yet there was pathos in it, friend;
I laughed a little on my road,
But the tears got the better soon,
It was so innocent to croon
His bits of verse to God.