The Kingdom of Love | Page 6

I've roved the world over,
And you are the loveliest flower that grows."
PLATONIC
I knew it the first of the summer,
I knew it the same at the end,
That you and your love were plighted,
But couldn't you be my friend?
Couldn't we sit in the twilight,
Couldn't we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
To bind us, and nothing more?
There was not a word of folly
Spoken between us two,
Though we lingered oft in the garden
Till the roses were wet with dew.
We touched on a thousand subjects
-
The moon and the worlds above, -
And our talk was tinctured with
science,
And everything else, save love.
A wholly Platonic friendship

You said I had proven to you
Could bind a man and a woman
The whole long season through,
With never a thought of flirting,
Though both were in their youth
What would you have said, my lady,
If you had known the truth!
What would you have done, I wonder,
Had I gone on my knees to you
And told you my passionate story,
There in the dusk and the dew?
My burning, burdensome story,
Hidden and hushed so long -
My story of hopeless loving -
Say, would you have thought it wrong?
But I fought with my heart and conquered,
I hid my wound from sight;
You were going away in the morning,
And I said a calm good-night.
But now when I sit in the twilight,
Or when I walk by the sea
That friendship, quite Platonic,
Comes surging over me.
And a passionate longing fills me
For the roses, the dusk, the dew;
For the beautiful summer vanished,
For the moonlight walks--and YOU.
GRANDPA'S CHRISTMAS
In his great cushioned chair by the fender

An old man sits dreaming tonight,
His withered hands, licked by the
tender
Warm rays of the red anthracite,
Are folded before him, all listless;
His dim eyes are fixed on the blaze,
While over him sweeps the
resistless
Flood-tide of old days.
He hears not the mirth in the hallway,
He hears not the sounds of good cheer,
That through the old
homestead ring alway
In the glad Christmas-time of the year.
He heeds not the chime of
sweet voices
As the last gifts are hung on the tree.
In a long-vanished day he
rejoices -
In his lost Used-to-be.
He has gone back across dead Decembers
To his childhood's fair land of delight;
And his mother's sweet smile
he remembers,
As he hangs up his stocking at night.
He remembers the
dream-haunted slumber
All broken and restless because
Of the visions that came without
number
Of dear Santa Claus.
Again, in his manhood's beginning,

He sees himself thrown on the world,
And into the vortex of sinning
By Pleasure's strong arms he is hurled.
He hears the sweet Christmas
bells ringing,
"Repent ye, repent ye, and pray";
But he joins with his comrades in
singing
A bacchanal lay.
Again he stands under the holly
With a blushing face lifted to his
For love has been stronger than
folly,
And has turned him from vice unto bliss;
And the whole world is lit
with new glory
As the sweet vows are uttered again,
While the Christmas bells tell
the old story
Of peace unto men.
Again, with his little brood 'round him,
He sits by the fair mother-wife;
He knows that the angels have
crowned him
With the truest, best riches of life;
And the hearts of the children,
untroubled,
Are filled with the gay Christmas-tide;
And the gifts for sweet
Maudie are doubled,
Tis her birthday, beside.
Again,--ah, dear Jesus, have pity -

He finds in the chill, waning day,
That one has come home from the
city -
Frail Maudie, whom love led astray.
She lies with her babe on her
bosom -
Half-hid by the snow's fleecy spread;
A bud and a poor trampled
blossom -
And both are quite dead.
So fair and so fragile! just twenty -
How mocking the bells sound to-night!
She starved in this great land
of plenty,
When she tried to grope back to the light.
Christ. are Thy disciples
inhuman,
Or only for MEN hast Thou died?
No mercy is shown to a woman
Who once steps aside.
Again he leans over the shrouded
Still form of the mother and wife;
Very lonely the way seems, and
clouded,
As he looks down the vista of life.
With the sweet Christmas chimes
there is blended
The knell for a life that is done,
And he knows that his joys are all
ended
And his waiting begun.
So long have the years been, so lonely,

As he counts them by Christmases gone.
"I am homesick," he
murmurs; "if only
The Angel would lead the way on.
I am cold, in this chill winter
weather;
Why, Maudie, dear, where have you been?
And you, too, sweet
wife--and together -
O Christ, let me in"
The children ran in from the hallway,
"Were you calling us, grandpa?" they said.
Then shrank, with that
fear that comes