Debris | Page 6

baby
In the room just next to mine.
"I DON'T CARE."
"I don't care," we hear it oft
And oft, the words are seeming fair;

But many a heartache lies beneath
A careless "I don't care!"
In every age, from every tongue,
The vain assertions fell;
But oh,
trust not the cheating words,
For never truth they tell!
Hearts may
grow sick with hope deferred,
Be crushed with black despair,
But
lips, too proud to own defeat,
Will whisper, "I don't care!"
A thoughtless friend flings out in jest--
As jesters always do--
A
deadly shaft you wince beneath,
You know the story's true;
But
while the dart has pierced your heart,
And poisoned, rankles there,

You look amused, and answer with
A smiling, "I don't care!"
When Fortune's favors are withdrawn,
And friends like shadows fled,

When all your fondest dreams are gone,
Your dearest hopes are
dead,
You curse the fickle goddess, then,
Who wrought you such
despair,
Yet hide chagrin beneath a frown,
And mutter, "I don't
care!"
The veteran, battle-scarred, who fills
A nation's honored place,


Feels keener than his saber's point,
Unmerited disgrace.
With
indignation all aflame
He meets some rival's stare;
But for all
answer gives the worlds
A freezing "I don't care!"
A woman's heart is trifled with,
Her hopes are ground to dust,
Her
proud soul humbled with neglect,
Betrayed her sacred trust,
Yet,
while to desperation stung,
With death and ruin there,
She'll crush
the tears and cheat you with
A laughing "I don't care?"
"I don't care!" 'tis but a breath,
The words are seeming fair,
But
many a heartache lies beneath
A careless "I don't care!"
A STAINED LILY.
Some lilies grew by a brook-side,
Tall and white, and cold,
And
lifted up to the sunshine
Their great red hearts of gold.
And near to their bed grew mosses,
rank vines, and flowers small,

And loathsome weeds, and thistles,
And the sunlight warmed them
all.
Anon, the proud white lilies
Were gathered one by one,
Each to
crown a festal
Rarest under the sun.
One lily stooped to the brooklet,
Her face she knew was fair,
And
the face of flowing water
Mirrored her image there.
A hand upraised in envy,
Or carelessness, or jest,
Flung from the
turbid water,
Mud, on the lily's breast.
And all the proud, white lilies
Turned their faces away,
And
nobody plucked that lily,
And day, and night, and day
She wept for her ruined beauty:
And the dew-drops, and the rain,

Touched with her tears, in pity
Fell on the muddy stain.

Still stood she in her grieving
Day, and night, and day;
Nor tears,
nor dew, nor rain-drops,
Could fade the stain away.
Pining in desolation,
Shunned by each of her kind,
Sought she a
bitter solace
In creatures of a coarser mind.
But the breath of the nettle stung her,
And the thistle's rude embrace

Burned her sensitive nature,
And scarred the fair, stained face.
Lower drooped the lily,
And died at the feet of the weeds;
And only
the tender mosses
Ministered to her needs.
And still the tall while lilies
Stand as cold, and proud,
And still the
weeds and thistles
Against the lilies crowd.
Alike the same warm sunbeams,
On weed and flower fall,
Alike by
the same soil nourished,
And the great God made them all.

A VALENTINE.
I love thee for the soul that shines
Within thine eyes' soft beaming,

From out whose depths the prisoned fires
Of intellect are gleaming.
I love thee for the mind that soars
Beyond earth's narrow keeping,

That measures suns, and stars, and worlds,
Through boundless limits
sweeping.
I love thee for the voice whose power
Can in my heart awaken
To
passioned life each slumbering chord
The ruder tones have shaken.
Thou ne'er, perchance, mayst feel the chain
With which this love has
bound thee,
Nor dream thee of the hand that flung
Its glittering
links around thee.

And vainly mayst thou deem the task
Thy captive bounds to sever--

Who madly dates to love thee now
Will love thee on forever.

WHICH ONE.
Each was as fair as the other,
And both as my life were dear;
And
the voices that lisped me mother,
Heaven's music in my ear.
One faded from life--and mother,
And died in the summer dawn;

And I turned away from the other
And wept for the child that was
gone.
Then I lay in a weird sleep-vision,
Before me an earth dark scene,

And the land of the sweet Elysian,
And only a grave between.
One child soft called me mother
Out from the shining door,
And
smile and beckoned; the other
Unconsciously played on the floor.
One's path, to my inward seeing,
Was light with a wondrous day,

And led to the heights of being,
And an angel showed the way.
The other lay where Marah's
Hot sands with snares are strewn--

Through many a darksome forest,
And the way was roughly hewn.
A faith to my soul was given--
The weird sleep-vision o'er--
And I
turned from the child in heaven
To the child that played on the floor.

LIFE'S WAY.
Good-bye, sweetheart, he said, and clasped her hand,
And rained his
kisses on her tear-wet face;
Then broke away, and in a foreign land.

For her dear sake, sought gold, that he might place

Love's jeweled crown upon his queen's fair brow,
And pour his
hard-won treasures at her feet;
And swore, than Heaven, than life
itself, his vow
To her he