Riley Songs of Home | Page 9

thy swollen palms, and roar
As thou never hast before!
Lustier! wilt
thou! peal on peal!
Stiflest? Squat and grind thy heel--
Wrestle with
thy loins, and then
Wheeze thee whiles, and whoop again!
THE SONG OF YESTERDAY
I
But yesterday
I looked away
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay

In golden blots
Inlaid with spots
Of shade and wild
forget-me-nots.
My head was fair
With flaxen hair,
And fragrant breezes, faint and
rare,
And warm with drouth
From out the south,
Blew all my
curls across my mouth.
And, cool and sweet,
My naked feet
Found dewy pathways through
the wheat;
And out again
Where, down the lane,
The dust was
dimpled with the rain.
[Illustration]
II
But yesterday:--
Adream, astray,
From morning's red to evening's
gray,
O'er dales and hills
Of daffodils
And lorn sweet-fluting
whippoorwills.
I knew nor cares
Nor tears nor prayers--
A mortal god, crowned
unawares
With sunset--and
A scepter-wand
Of apple-blossoms in
my hand!

The dewy blue
Of twilight grew
To purple, with a star or two

Whose lisping rays
Failed in the blaze
Of sudden fireflies through
the haze.
III
But yesterday
I heard the lay
Of summer birds, when I, as they

With breast and wing,
All quivering
With life and love, could only
sing.
My head was lent
Where, with it, blent
A maiden's o'er her
instrument;
While all the night,
From vale to height,
Was filled
with echoes of delight.
And all our dreams
Were lit with gleams
Of that lost land of reedy
streams.
Along whose brim
Forever swim
Pan's lilies, laughing up
at him.
[Illustration]
IV
But yesterday!...
O blooms of May,
And summer
roses--where-away?
O stars above;
And lips of love,
And all the
honeyed sweets thereof!--
O lad and lass,
And orchard pass,
And briered lane, and daisied
grass!
O gleam and gloom,
And woodland bloom,
And breezy
breaths of all perfume!--
No more for me
Or mine shall be
Thy raptures--save in memory,--

No more--no more--
Till through the Door
Of Glory gleam the
days of yore.
[Illustration]
SONG OF PARTING

Say farewell, and let me go;
Shatter every vow!
All the future can
bestow
Will be welcome now!
And if this fair hand I touch
I have
worshipped overmuch,
It was my mistake--and so,
Say farewell,
and let me go.
Say farewell, and let me go:
Murmur no regret,
Stay your tear-drops
ere they flow--
Do not waste them yet!
They might pour as pours
the rain,
And not wash away the pain:
I have tried them and I
know.--
Say farewell, and let me go.
Say farewell, and let me go:
Think me not untrue--
True as truth is,
even so
I am true to you!
If the ghost of love may stay
Where my
fond heart dies to-day,
I am with you alway--so,
Say farewell, and
let me go.
[Illustration]
OUR KIND OF A MAN
I
The kind of a man for you and me!
He faces the world unflinchingly,

And smites, as long as the wrong resists,
With a knuckled faith and
force like fists:
He lives the life he is preaching of,
And loves where
most is the need of love;
His voice is clear to the deaf man's ears,

And his face sublime through the blind man's tears;
The light shines
out where the clouds were dim,
And the widow's prayer goes up for
him;
The latch is clicked at the hovel door
And the sick man sees
the sun once more,
And out o'er the barren fields he sees
Springing
blossoms and waving trees,
Feeling as only the dying may,
That
God's own servant has come that way,
Smoothing the path as it still
winds on
Through the Golden Gate where his loved have gone.
II

The kind of a man for me and you!
However little of worth we do

He credits full, and abides in trust
That time will teach us how more
is just.
He walks abroad, and he meets all kinds
Of querulous and
uneasy minds,
And, sympathizing, he shares the pain
Of the doubts
that rack us, heart and brain;
And, knowing this, as we grasp his hand,

We are surely coming to understand!
He looks on sin with pitying
eyes--
E'en as the Lord, since Paradise,--
Else, should we read,
"Though our sins should glow
As scarlet, they shall be white as
snow"?--
And, feeling still, with a grief half glad,
That the bad are
as good as the good are bad,
He strikes straight out for the Right--and
he
Is the kind of a man for you and me!
[Illustration]
"HOW DID YOU REST, LAST NIGHT?"
"How did you rest, last night?"--
I've heard my gran'pap say
Them
words a thousand times--that's right--
Jes them words thataway!
As
punctchul-like as morning dast
To ever heave in sight
Gran'pap 'ud
allus haf to ast--
"How did you rest, last night?"
[Illustration]
Us young-uns used to grin,
At breakfast, on the sly,
And mock the
wobble of his chin
And eyebrows belt so high
And kind: "How did
you rest, last night?"
We'd mumble and let on
Our voices trimbled,
and our sight
Was dim, and hearin' gone.

Bad as I used to be,
All I'm a-wantin' is
As puore and ca'm a sleep
fer me
And sweet a sleep as his!
And so I pray, on Jedgment Day

To wake, and with its light
See his
face dawn, and hear him say--

"How did you rest, last night?"
[Illustration]

[Illustration]
OUT OF THE HITHERWHERE
Out of the hitherwhere into the Yon--
The land that the Lord's love
rests upon;
Where one may rely on the friends he meets,
And