If I should die to-night And you should come to my cold corpse and kneel, Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel, I say, if I should die to-night And you should come to me, and there and then I might arise the while, But I'd drop dead again. Ben King. "THE DAY IS DONE" THE day is done, and darkness I see the lights of the baker, Gleam through the rain and mist, A feeling of sadness and longing That is not like being sick, And resembles sorrow only As a brickbat resembles a brick. Come, get for me some supper,— Not from the pastry bakers, I wouldn't give a farthing For all that they can make. Jacob For, like the soup at dinner, Go to some honest butcher, Such things through days of labor, They have an astonishing power To aid and reinforce, And come like the "finally, brethren," Then get me a tender sirloin From off the bench or hook. And lend to its sterling goodness And the night shall be filled with comfort, Shall fold up their blankets like Indians, 491 Phabe Cary. JACOB "Apartments let," He dwelt among About five stories high; A man, I thought, that none would get, And very few would try. A boulder, by a larger stone He lived unknown, and few could tell But he has got a wife-and O! The difference to me! Phabe Cary. BALLAD OF THE CANAL WE were crowded in the cabin, So we shuddered there in silence, And as thus we lay in darkness, And his little daughter whispered, Then he kissed the little maiden, And with better cheer we spoke, And we trotted into Pittsburg, When the morn looked through the smoke. Phabe Cary. Reuben THERE'S A BOWER OF BEAN-VINES 493 THERE'S a bower of bean-vines in Benjamin's yard, That bower and its products I never forget, But oft, when my landlady presses me hard, I think, are the cabbages growing there yet, Are the bean-vines still bearing in Benjamin's yard? No, the bean-vines soon withered that once used to wave, But some beans had been gathered, the last that hung on; And a soup was distilled in a kettle, that gave All the fragrance of summer when summer was gone. Thus memory draws from delight, ere it dies, An essence that breathes of it awfully hard; As thus good to my taste as 'twas then to my eyes, REUBEN THAT very time I saw, (but thou couldst not), In henly meditation, bullet free. Phabe Cary. THE WIFE HER washing ended with the day, And passed the long, long night away But when the sun in all its state She passed about the kitchen grate And went to making pies. Phabe Cary. WHEN LOVELY WOMAN WHEN lovely woman wants a favor, And finds, too late, that man won't bend, What earthly circumstance can save her From disappointment in the end? The only way to bring him over, Whether a husband or a lover, If he have feeling is to cry. Phœbe Cary. JOHN THOMPSON'S DAUGHTER A FELLOW near Kentucky's clime Cries, "Boatman, do not tarry, And I'll give thee a silver dime To row us o'er the ferry." "Now, who would cross the Ohio, This dark and stormy water?" "O, I am this young lady's beau, And she, John Thompson's daughter. |