The Kingdom of Love | Page 9

you, from this
scene of fashion;
To know you were mine, and to have you care,

And to lose myself in the crimson snare
Of your lips, in a kiss of
passion."
He said--"You are going abroad, no doubt,
This land of Liberty
coldly scorning.
I too shall journey a bit about,
From Wall Street up
by the L. Road out
To Harlem, and down each morning."
He thought--"It must follow on land or sea,
This pent-up, passionate,
dumb devotion,
Till the cry of a rapture that may not be
Shall reach
your heart from the heart of me
And stir you with strange emotion."
WANTED--A LITTLE GIRL
Where have they gone to--the little girls
With natural manners and
natural curls;
Who love their dollies and like their toys,
And talk of
something besides the boys?
Little old women in plenty I find,
Mature in manners and old of mind;

Little old flirts who talk of their "beaux,"
And vie with each other
in stylish clothes.
Little old belles who, at nine and ten,
Are sick of pleasure and tired of
men;
Weary of travel, of balls, of fun,
And find no new thing under
the sun.
Once, in the beautiful long ago,
Some dear little children I used to
know;
Girls who were merry as lambs at play,
And laughed and
rollicked the livelong day.
They thought not at all of the "style" of their clothes,
They never
imagined that boys were "beaux" -
"Other girls' brothers" and "mates"

were they,
Splendid fellows to help them play.
Where have they gone to? If you see
One of them anywhere send her
to me.
I would give a medal of purest gold
To one of those dear
little girls of old,
With an innocent heart and an open smile,
Who
knows not the meaning of "flirt" or "style."
THE SUICIDE
Vast was the wealth I carried in life's pack -
Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust; but Time
And Fate, those
robbers fit for any crime,
Stole all, and left me but the empty sack.

Before me lay a long and lonely track
Of darkling hills and barren steeps to climb;
Behind me lay in
shadows the sublime
Lost lands of Love's delight. Alack! Alack!
Unwearied, and with springing steps elate,
I had conveyed my wealth along the road.
The empty sack proved
now a heavier load:
I was borne down beneath its worthless weight.

I stumbled on, and knocked at Death's dark gate.
There was no answer. Stung by sorrow's goad
I FORCED my way
into that grim abode,
And laughed, and flung Life's empty sack to
Fate.
Unknown and uninvited I passed in
To that strange land that hangs between two goals,
Round which a
dark and solemn river rolls -
More dread its silence than the loud
earth's din.
And now, where was the peace I hoped to win?
Black-masted ships slid past me in great shoals,
Their bloody decks
thronged with mistaken souls.
(God punishes mistakes sometimes

like sin.)
Not rest and not oblivion I found.
My suffering self dwelt with me just the same;
But here no sleep was,
and no sweet dreams came
To give me respite. Tyrant Death,
uncrowned
By my own hand, still King of Terrors, frowned
Upon my shuddering soul, that shrank in shame
Before those eyes
where sorrow blent with blame,
And those accusing lips that made no
sound.
What gruesome shapes dawned on my startled sight
What awful sighs broke on my listening ear!
The anguish of the earth,
augmented here
A thousand-fold, made one continuous night.
The
sack I flung away in impious spite
Hung yet upon me, filled, I saw in fear.
With tears that rained from
earth's adjacent sphere,
And turned to stones in falling from that
height.
And close about me pressed a grieving throng,
Each with his heavy sack, which bowed him so
His face was hidden.
One of these mourned: "Know
Who enters here but finds the way
more long
To those fair realms where sounds the angels' song.
There is no man-made exit out of woe;
Ye cannot dash the locked
door down and go
To claim thy rightful joy through paths of wrong."
He passed into the shadows dim and grey,
And left me to pursue my path alone.
With terror greater than I yet
had known.
Hard on my soul the awful knowledge lay,
Death had
not ended life nor found God's way;

But, with my same sad sorrows still my own,
Where by-roads led to
by-roads, thistle-sown,
I had but wandered off and gone astray.
With earth still near enough to hear its sighs,
With heaven afar and hell but just below,
Still on and on my lonely
soul must go
Until I earn the right to Paradise.
We cannot force our
way into God's skies,
Nor rush into the rest we long to know;
But patiently, with bleeding
steps and slow
Toil on to where selfhood in Godhood dies.
"NOW I LAY ME"
When I pass from earth away,
Palsied though I be and grey,
May
my spirit keep so young
That my failing, faltering tongue
Frames
that prayer so dear to me,
Taught me at my mother's knee:
"Now I
lay me down to sleep,"
(Passing to Eternal