Riley Songs of Home | Page 7

memory,
Though all of love were lost beside--
I
yet would feel how first the wine
Of your sweet lips made fools of
mine
Until they sung, all drunken through--
"What could I not
forget for you?"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]

A FEEL IN THE CHRIS'MAS-AIR
They's a kind o' feel in the air, to me.
When the Chris'mas-times sets in.
That's about as much of a mystery

As ever I've run ag'in!--
Fer instunce, now, whilse I gain in weight

And gineral health, I swear
They's a goneness somers I can't quite
state--
A kind o' feel in the air.
[Illustration]
They's a feel in the Chris'mas-air goes right
To the spot where a man
lives at!--
It gives a feller a' appetite--
They ain't no doubt about
that!--
And yit they's somepin'--I don't know what--
That follers me,
here and there,
And ha'nts and worries and spares me not--
A kind
o' feel in the air!
They's a feel, as I say, in the air that's jest
As blame-don sad as
sweet!--
In the same ra-sho as I feel the best
And am spryest on my
feet,
They's allus a kind o' sort of a' ache
That I can't lo-cate
no-where;--
But it comes with Chris'mas, and no mistake!--
A kind
o' feel in the air.
Is it the racket the childern raise?--
W'y, no_!--God bless 'em!--_no!--

Is it the eyes and the cheeks ablaze--
Like my own wuz, long
ago?--
Is it the bleat o' the whistle and beat
O' the little toy-drum
and blare
O' the horn?--No! no!--it is jest the sweet--
The sad-sweet
feel in the air.
[Illustration]
AS CREATED
There's a space for good to bloom in
Every heart of man or woman,--

And however wild or human,
Or however brimmed with gall,

Never heart may beat without it;
And the darkest heart to doubt it


Has something good about it
After all.
[Illustration]
WHERE-AWAY
O the Lands of Where-Away!
Tell us--tell us--where are they?

Through the darkness and the dawn
We have journeyed on and on--

From the cradle to the cross--
From possession unto loss.--

Seeking still, from day to day,
For the Lands of Where-Away.
When our baby-feet were first
Planted where the daisies burst,
And
the greenest grasses grew
In the fields we wandered through,--
On,
with childish discontent,
Ever on and on we went,
Hoping still to
pass, some day,
O'er the verge of Where-Away.
Roses laid their velvet lips
On our own, with fragrant sips;
But their
kisses held us not,
All their sweetness we forgot;--
Though the
brambles in our track
Plucked at us to hold us back--
"Just ahead,"
we used to say,
"Lie the Lands of Where-Away."
Children at the pasture-bars,
Through the dusk, like glimmering stars,

Waved their hands that we should bide
With them over eventide;

Down the dark their voices failed
Falteringly, as they hailed,
And
died into yesterday--
Night ahead and--Where-Away?
Twining arms about us thrown--
Warm caresses, all our own,
Can
but stay us for a spell--
Love hath little new to tell
To the soul in
need supreme,
Aching ever with the dream
Of the endless bliss it
may
Find in Lands of Where-Away!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]

DREAMER, SAY
Dreamer, say, will you dream for me
A wild sweet dream of a foreign
land,
Whose border sips of a foaming sea
With lips of coral and
silver sand;
Where warm winds loll on the shady deeps,
Or lave
themselves in the tearful mist
The great wild wave of the breaker
weeps
O'er crags of opal and amethyst?
Dreamer, say, will you dream a dream
Of tropic shades in the lands
of shine,
Where the lily leans o'er an amber stream
That flows like a
rill of wasted wine,--
Where the palm-trees, lifting their shields of
green,
Parry the shafts of the Indian sun
Whose splintering
vengeance falls between
The reeds below where the waters run?
Dreamer, say, will you dream of love
That lives in a land of sweet
perfume,
Where the stars drip down from the skies above
In molten
spatters of bud and bloom?
Where never the weary eyes are wet,

And never a sob in the balmy air,
And only the laugh of the
paroquette
Breaks the sleep of the silence there?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
OUR OWN
They walk here with us, hand-in-hand;
We gossip, knee-by-knee;

They tell us all that they have planned--
Of all their joys to be,--

And, laughing, leave us: And, to-day,
All desolate we cry
Across
wide waves of voiceless graves--
Good-by! Good-by! Good-by!
THE OLD TRUNDLE-BED
O the old trundle-bed where I slept when a boy!
What canopied king
might not covet the joy?
The glory and peace of that slumber of mine,


Like a long, gracious rest in the bosom divine:
The quaint, homely
couch, hidden close from the light,
But daintily drawn from its hiding
at night.
O a nest of delight, from the foot to the head,
Was the
queer little, clear little, old trundle-bed!
O the old trundle-bed, where I wondering saw
The stars through the
window, and listened with awe
To the sigh of the winds as they
tremblingly crept
Through the trees where the robin so restlessly slept:

Where I heard the low, murmurous chirp of the wren,
And the
katydid listlessly chirrup again,
Till my fancies grew faint and were
drowsily led
Through the maze of the dreams of the old trundle bed.
[Illustration]
O the old trundle-bed! O the old trundle-bed!
With its plump