Songs of Friendship | Page 6

an appetite!
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[Illustration: And so likewise do the farmhands stare]

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A tin o' black coffee, and a rhuburb pie--
Be they old and cold as
charity--
They're hot-stuff enough for the pore hobo,
And it's
"Thanks, kind lady, for to treat me so!"
Then he fills his pipe with a stub cigar
And swipes a coal from the
kitchen fire,
And the hired girl says, in a smilin' tone,--
"It's
good-by, John, if you call that goin'!"
Oh, the hobo's life is a roving life,
It robs pretty maids of their heart's
delight--
It causes them to weep and it causes them to mourn
For
the life of a hobo, never to return.
[Illustration: A hobo voluntary--tailpiece]
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[Illustration: Be our fortunes as they may--headpiece]
BE OUR FORTUNES AS THEY MAY
Be our fortunes as they may,
Touched with loss or sorrow,
Saddest
eyes that weep to-day
May be glad to-morrow.
Yesterday the rain was here,
And the winds were blowing--
Sky
and earth and atmosphere
Brimmed and overflowing.
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But to-day the sun is out,
And the drear November
We were then so
vexed about
Now we scarce remember.
Yesterday you lost a friend--
Bless your heart and love it!--
For you
scarce could comprehend
All the aching of it;--
But I sing to you and say:
Let the lost friend sorrow--
Here's

another come to-day,
Others may to-morrow.
[Illustration: Be our fortunes as they may--tailpiece]
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I SMOKE MY PIPE
I can't extend to every friend
In need a helping hand--
No matter
though I wish it so,
'Tis not as Fortune planned;
But haply may I
fancy they
Are men of different stripe
Than others think who hint
and wink,--
And so--I smoke my pipe!
A golden coal to crown the bowl--
My pipe and I alone,--
I sit and
muse with idler views
Perchance than I should own:--
It might be
worse to own the purse
Whose glutted bowels gripe
In little qualms
of stinted alms;
And so I smoke my pipe.
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[Illustration: And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds]
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And if inclined to moor my mind
And cast the anchor Hope,
A puff
of breath will put to death
The morbid misanthrope
That lurks
inside--as errors hide
In standing forms of type
To mar at birth
some line of worth;
And so I smoke my pipe.
The subtle stings misfortune flings
Can give me little pain
When
my narcotic spell has wrought
This quiet in my brain:
When I can
waste the past in taste
So luscious and so ripe
That like an elf I hug
myself;
And so I smoke my pipe.
And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds
I watch the phantom's
flight,
Till alien eyes from Paradise
Smile on me as I write:
And I

forgive the wrongs that live,
As lightly as I wipe
Away the tear that
rises here;
And so I smoke my pipe.
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[Illustration: Uncle Sidney to Marcellus--headpiece]
UNCLE SIDNEY TO MARCELLUS
Marcellus, won't you tell us--
Truly tell us, if you can,--
What will
you be, Marcellus,
When you get to be a man?
You turn, with never answer
But to the band that plays.--
O rapt
and eerie dancer,
What of your future days?
Far in the years before us
We dreamers see your fame,
While song
and praise in chorus
Make music of your name.
And though our dreams foretell us
As only visions can,
You must
prove it, O Marcellus,
When you get to be a man!
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A SONG BY UNCLE SIDNEY
O were I not a clod, intent
On being just an earthly thing,
I'd be that
rare embodiment
Of Heart and Spirit, Voice and Wing,
With pure,
ecstatic, rapture-sent,
Divinely-tender twittering
That Echo swoons
to re-present,--
A bluebird in the Spring.
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[Illustration: The poet's love for the children--headpiece]
THE POET'S LOVE FOR THE CHILDREN
Kindly and warm and tender,
He nestled each childish palm
So

close in his own that his touch was a prayer
And his speech a blessed
psalm.
He has turned from the marvelous pages
Of many an alien tome--

Haply come down from Olivet,
Or out from the gates of Rome--
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[Illustration: Of the orchard-lands of childhood]
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Set sail o'er the seas between him
And each little beckoning hand

That fluttered about in the meadows
And groves of his native land,--
Fluttered and flashed on his vision
As, in the glimmering light
Of
the orchard-lands of childhood,
The blossoms of pink and white.
And there have been sobs in his bosom,
As out on the shores he stept,

And many a little welcomer
Has wondered why he wept.--
That was because, O children,
Ye might not always be
The same
that the Savior's arms were wound
About, in Galilee.
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[Illustration: Friend of a wayward hour--headpiece]
FRIEND OF A WAYWARD HOUR
Friend of a wayward hour, you came
Like some good ghost, and went
the same;
And I within the haunted place
Sit smiling on your
vanished face,
And talking with--your name.
But thrice the pressure of your hand--
First hail--congratulations--and

Your last "God bless you!" as the train
That brought you snatched
you back again
Into the unknown land.

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"God bless me?" Why, your very prayer
Was answered ere you asked
it there,
I know--for when you came to lend
Me your kind hand, and
call me friend,
God blessed me unaware.
[Illustration: Friend of a wayward hour--tailpiece]
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[Illustration: