Part 3

And this is the end of the story. Sorry!

Why didn't they make it two? Eheu!

So simple to make him two!

TWENTY YEARS HENCE

Twenty years hence, some fading day,

Will you through this green orchard stray,

With thoughts afar

On golden hours we freely spent,

And bought the merchandise, content,

At Time's bazaar?

You'll say--"He puffed the smoke in rings;

We talked of books, and other things;

Devised a plot;

Together wove some idle rhymes

Of coloured threads that matched sometimes,

And sometimes not.

"The oriole from his chosen tree

Made better poetry than we,

About his nest.

Soft paced the hours like clouds, until

There rose a poem better still

Far in the west."

Twenty years hence! Across the sky

The swift incessant swallows fly.

You'll not forget

The bees, nor how the oriole sung,

Twenty years since, when we were young,

His chansonette?

"Margaret, Margaret!" Some one calls!

"Margaret, come. The night dew falls,

The grass is wet."

Twenty years hence--The lawn is dark,

And the whip-poor-wills are wailing. Hark!

"Margaret! Margaret!"

WITHOUT THE GATE

Spectral birches, slim and white,

Stand apart in the cool moonlight,

The faint thin cries

Of the night arise

And the stars are out in companies.

They are but lamps on your palace stair,

My queen of the night with dusky hair,

Whose heart is a rose

In a garden close

And the gate is shut where the highway goes.

Margaret, Margaret, early and late

I knock and whisper without the gate.

No night wind blows,

Still is the rose,

Noiseless the flowing moonlight flows.

I knock and listen. No sound is heard.

The rose in its fragrance sleeps unstirred.

Early and late

I watch and wait

For the love of a rose by a garden gate.

ANCIEN M'SIEU PIERRE

Was it, Nannette, so long ago?

T rois vingt et--Chut! How time does go!

You must be dead! What do I know! 'Twas long ago.

Your eyes--ah, I remember now!

They seemed to say, "But, Pierre, you're so,

So bad!" And that was long ago,

Long, long ago.

Yes, they were blue. And you stood there,

And then the wind blew out your hair.

How beautiful! how soft! how fair,

Nannette, your hair!

So long it takes one to forget!

I have been glad, and am, and yet,

Sometimes--it's strange--one's eyes are wet.

Nannette! Nannette!

What's that! I dream! Did some one speak?

Her hair was blown across my cheek.

It seemed so. How the shutters creak!

Did some one speak?

CHRISTMAS EVE

The abbot was counting his beads in his cell

With a flagon beside him. The abbot drank well,

And emptied it oft ere the first matin bell.

All quiet, all well.

"Hist! Brother Menander! A word in thine ear.

I'll show thee a way, if the corridor's clear,

To the abbot's own cellar. The abbot may hear?

Never fear! Never fear!"

Oh, Brother Menander, oh, bold Brother John,

Be chary, call wary on Mary her Son!

Ah, Jesu, the moon the cold snow shines on,

How bitter and wan!

So roundly they drank till the first matin bell,

And were caught by the abbot, as chronicles tell.

What would you! 'Twas Christmas Eve. So it befell.

And all quiet and well.

THE CAROL SINGER

Gentles all, or knights or ladies,

Happiness be yours, alway;

Dance and carolling our trade is,

But we sing for love to-day.

Merry lads and dainty lasses

Trip beneath the mistletoe,

Dance to sound of clinking glasses.

Bells are ringing in the snow.

By the look that on your face is,

Sweet, my song is worth a kiss.

There is weeping in cold places,

We must laugh the more in this.

Gentles all, or knights or ladies,

Happiness is yours, alway;

Dance and carolling our trade is,

But we sing for love to-day.

ARCADIE. I

On the road to Arcadie,

Past the mountains, past the sea,

Past the crossways soberly

To Arcadie, to Arcadie.

Pilgrims of a dream are we,

Knowing not if true it be,

But we press on silently

To Arcadie, to Arcadie.

Arcadie! Oh, Arcadie!

We are lost, we cannot see!

For the dust blows bitterly

On the road to Arcadie.

ARCADIE. II

I travelled many winding ways

That weary seemed to me,

In cloudy nights and windy days

To find old Arcadie.

The shepherds by the wayside wept

"We fain would go with thee,

An 'twere not for the sheep we kept,

To far off Arcadie."

Along the selfsame way I fare

And the shepherds ask of me,

"Hast thou seen the sweet land anywhere?"

"Yea, but the people dwelling there

Know not 'tis Arcadie."

MARTIAL TO PLINY

_Cum rosa regnat, cum madent capilli,_

_Nunc me vel rigidi legant Catones._

Come not with wine drops on the hair

To Pliny's gates,

To whom all earnest thoughts repair,

And quiet Wisdom entered there

His bidding waits.

When the rose is queen and the hair is wet

With wine and oil,

Read Martial's verses, and forget

That life is stern, and time a debt

To pay with toil.

LAST YEAR'S NEST

There are no birds in last year's nest.

Where snows have been,

There is no place for love to rest

And nestle in.

Mine were the summer songs, but there

Fell the white cold.

No feathery thoughts now nestle where

They did of old.

EPILOGUE TO A BOOK OF UNIMPORTANT VERSES

An unfair title that forestalls

The judgment of my peers,

An after title that recalls

The hopes of other years,

When words were flowers beside the way,

And the world in rhythm ran,

And grief was dainty, and love was play,

And the breath of death, would scan,

And all the long results of time

Were captives of a happy rhyme.

FINIS

The wind and the rain

And the sunshine again

And the murmur of flies at the window pane!

I weave my rhymes

In the morning betimes,

And it all creeps in with the faint word chimes.

For the wind is there,

Wet skies and fair,

And the buzz of the flies there too somewhere,

And there is the beat

Of the passers' feet

Gone echoing down the hidden street.

End of Project Gutenberg's Harps Hung Up In Babylon, by Arthur Colton