Victor Roy, A Masonic poem | Page 4

come in vain,?And over the darkness of weeping and death,?We'll be always together, and happy again."
Why did I read these lines, was it only to mock my woe??For less would the burden be and the sin would be less I know, If I knew that my darling was safe and blest where the angels are. Why do I murmur? for God's will stands at each end of the mystic bar. Well, why do I stay here gazing hopelessly into the fire??Watching the coals that glow and burn, then fall away and expire, It seems that out of their flashing light my lost love appears to rise, And another face that has haunted me all day with its wistful eyes As we halted at church to-day; a face, a young girl's face, so sad, Looked out among the crowd that gazed, and her dark eyes made me glad. What strange, queer beings we are, a look, or a song, or a flower, A scent on the air, a sound of the sea, they come with such power, That the long years vanish away, and over death's murky tide Spiritual bodies fearlessly walk, and stand with us side by side. Gone is all distance and time, vanished far is the grave's eclipse. Again sweet voices are in our ears, their breath upon our lips, So, with that poor, strange child to-day, who has never heard Aimee's
name,?Little she thought that her earnest eyes rekindled a smouldering flame. There was an old familiar look of the happy days once fled, An old familiar look of one that I love as we love the dead. Love her? love Aimee? do I love her less, because since I kissed her last Over my desolate heart the tides of twenty-five years have passed? I am longing to-night to hear her hymn, her sweet "Abide with me," As she sang it, leaning upon my breast the night I put out to sea. I know it was only she I loved, and thought of that eventide; But now I can fully endorse the draft, "O Lord with me abide," And spite of the heavy clouds that hang o'er my life path near and far, I own with Vera that "Christ's love stands at each end of the mystic bar," And so much of the desert life has been travelled by night and day, That the shores of the summer land are not so very far away. And although I know there is one dark sea where black waves heave and
toss,?I know the Pilot who waits for me will carry me safely across. My path down to that water's edge is one avenue of pines;?But though I walk amid shadows dim, o'erhead the bright sun shines.
ROBERT'S DEATH
Heavily rolleth the wintry clouds,?And the ceaseless snow is falling, falling,?While the frost king's troops in their icy shrouds?Whistle and howl like lost spirits calling.
In a scantily furnished tenement room.?Through which the same frost troops are sighing,?Churlishly gloweth the charcoal flame,?While a man lies there in penury dying.
Nothing new on this beautiful earth,?Are hunger and nakedness, cold and pain,?Over God's sinless creation of love?The serpent glides with his poisonous train.
"Where is Aimee?" here I lie all alone in this wretched hole, I who was reared as a gentleman's son, an aristocrat to the soul, Could drink more wine at my father's board than the best man out of a
score;?Rode with the hounds at ten years old, and played high in a few years
more.?A man can live without love, but he can't get along without gold, And a woman and child sadly hamper a fellow that's poor or old. How can a gentleman work and toil year after year like a slave? For when you've worked your life away you're asked, "Why did not you
save?"?Not that I would reproach my wife, I daresay she has done her best; But women can earn such a trifle, and grow weak if they lose their rest. Not that Aimee has ever grumbled, and I am not to be blamed, If she choose to work and stitch away from morn till the sunset flamed; And just the course of my crooked luck, that if but one child we had, The boy must go and the girl must stay; that boy was a likely lad, Would have been nineteen if he'd lived, might be earning a good sum now, For Willie was something like me, wide awake, had a sensible brow; But Ethel, poor child, her mother again lives in a world of her own, Sees faces in flowers, hears voices in winds, reads poems from chiselled
stone.?I certainly havn't had the best of luck, I've tried in different lands, And, as I said, it's a drag to have others upon your hands. 'Twas a most disappointing thing, of course, when