Chapter IV

Donn Piatt of Mac-o-chee!
What a darling destiny
Has been mine--to meet him there--
Lolling in an easy chair
On the terrace, while he told
Reminiscences of old--
Letting my cigar die out,
Hearing poems talked about;
And entranced to hear him say
Gentle things of Thackeray,
Dickens, Hawthorne, and the rest,
Known to him as host and guest--
Known to him as he to me--
Donn Piatt of Mac-o-chee!

THEM FLOWERS.

Take a feller 'at's sick and laid up on the shelf,
All shaky, and ga'nted, and pore--
Jes all so knocked out he can't handle hisself
With a stiff upper-lip any more;
Shet him up all alone in the gloom of a room
As dark as the tomb, and as grim,
And then take and send him some roses in bloom,
And you can have fun out o' him!

You've ketched him 'fore now--when his liver was sound
And his appetite notched like a saw--
A-mockin' you, mayby, fer romancin' round
With a big posy-bunch in yer paw;
But you ketch him, say, when his health is away,
And he's flat on his back in distress,
And _then_ you kin trot out yer little bokay
And not be insulted, I guess!

You see, it's like this, what his weaknesses is,--
Them flowers makes him think of the days
Of his innocent youth, and that mother o' his,
And the roses that _she_ us't to raise:--
So here, all alone with the roses you send--
Bein' sick and all trimbly and faint,--
My eyes is--my eyes is--my eyes is--old friend--
Is a-leakin'--I'm blamed ef they ain't!

THE QUIET LODGER.

The man that rooms next door to me:
Two weeks ago, this very night,
He took possession quietly,
As any other lodger might--
But why the room next mine should so
Attract him I was vexed to know,--
Because his quietude, in fine,
Was far superior to mine.

"Now, I like quiet, truth to tell,
A tranquil life is sweet to me--
But _this_," I sneered, "suits me too well.--
He shuts his door so noiselessly,
And glides about so very mute,
In each mysterious pursuit,
His silence is oppressive, and
Too deep for me to understand."

Sometimes, forgetting book or pen,
I've found my head in breathless poise
Lifted, and dropped in shame again,
Hearing some alien ghost of noise--
Some smothered sound that seemed to be
A trunk-lid dropped unguardedly,
Or the crisp writhings of some quire
Of manuscript thrust in the fire.

Then I have climbed, and closed in vain
My transom, opening in the hall;
Or close against the window-pane
Have pressed my fevered face,--but all
The day or night without held not
A sight or sound or counter-thought
To set my mind one instant free
Of this man's silent mastery.

And often I have paced the floor
With muttering anger, far at night,
Hearing, and cursing, o'er and o'er,
The muffled noises, and the light
And tireless movements of this guest
Whose silence raged above my rest
Hoarser than howling storms at sea--
The man that rooms next door to me.

But twice or thrice, upon the stair,
I've seen his face--most strangely wan,--
Each time upon me unaware
He came--smooth'd past me, and was gone.
So like a whisper he went by,
I listened after, ear and eye,
Nor could my chafing fancy tell
The meaning of one syllable.

Last night I caught him, face to face,--
He entering his room, and I
Glaring from mine: He paused a space
And met my scowl all shrinkingly,
But with full gentleness: The key
Turned in his door--and I could see
It tremblingly withdrawn and put
Inside, and then--the door was shut.

Then silence. _Silence_!--why, last night
The silence was tumultuous,
And thundered on till broad daylight;--
O never has it stunned me thus!--
It rolls, and moans, and mumbles yet.--
Ah, God! how loud may silence get
When man mocks at a brother man
Who answers but as silence can!

The silence grew, and grew, and grew,
Till at high noon to-day 'twas heard
Throughout the house; and men flocked through
The echoing halls, with faces blurred
With pallor, gloom, and fear, and awe,
And shuddering at what they saw--
The quiet lodger, as he lay
Stark of the life he cast away.

* * * * *

So strange to-night--those voices there,
Where all so quiet was before;
They say the face has not a care
Nor sorrow in it any more--
His latest scrawl:--"Forgive me--You
Who prayed, 'they know not what they do!'"
My tears wilt never let me see
This man that rooms next door to me!

THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT.

O the waiting in the watches of the night!
In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright;
The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight:
The ever weary memory that ever weary goes
Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows--
The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose--
In the dreary, weary watches of the night!

Dark--stifling dark--the watches of the night!
With tingling nerves at tension, how the blackness flashes white
With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight!--
What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought
that may not be redressed--
Of tears we did not brush away--of lips we left unpressed,
And hands that we let fall, with all their loyalty unguessed!
Ah! the empty, empty watches of the night!

What solace in the watches of the night?--
What frailest staff of hope to stay--what faintest shaft of light?
Do we _dream_ and dare _believe_ it, that by never weight of right
Of our own poor weak deservings, we shall win the dawn at last--
Our famished souls find freedom from this penance for the past,
In a faith that leaps and lightens from the gloom
that flees aghast--
Shall we survive the watches of the night?

One leads us through the watches of the night--
By the ceaseless intercession of our loved ones lost to sight
He is with us through all trials, in His mercy and His might;--
With our mothers there about Him, all our sorrow disappears,
Till the silence of our sobbing is the prayer the Master hears,
And His hand is laid upon us with the tenderness of tears
In the waning of the watches of the night.

HIS VIGIL.

Close the book and dim the light,
I shall read no more to-night.
No--I am not sleepy, dear--
Do not go: sit by me here
In the darkness and the deep
Silence of the watch I keep.
Something in your presence so
Soothes me--as in long ago
I first felt your hand--as now--
In the darkness touch my brow;
I've no other wish than you
Thus should fold mine eyelids to,
Saying nought of sigh or tear--
Just as God were sitting here.

THE PLAINT HUMAN

Season of snows, and season of flowers,
Seasons of loss and gain!--
Since grief and joy must alike be ours,
Why do we still complain?

Ever our failing, from sun to sun,
O my intolerent brother:--
We want just a little too little of one,
And much too much of the other.

BY ANY OTHER NAME.

First the teacher called the roll,
Clos't to the beginnin',
"Addeliney Bowersox!"
Set the school a-grinnin'.
Wintertime, and stingin'-cold
When the session took up--
Cold as _we_ all looked at _her_,
Though _she_ couldn't look up!

Total stranger to us, too--
Country-folks ain't allus
Nigh so shameful unpolite
As some people call us!--
But the honest facts is, _then_,
Addeliney Bower-
Sox's feelin's was so hurt
She cried half an hour!

My dest was acrost from her 'n:
Set and watched her tryin'
To p'tend she didn't keer,
And a kind o' dryin'
Up her tears with smiles---tel I
Thought, "Well, '_Addeliney
Bowersox_' is plain, but _she's_
Purty as a piney!"

It's be'n many of a year
Sence that most oncommon
Cur'ous name o' _Bowersox_
Struck me so abomin-
Nubble and outlandish-like!--
I changed it to Adde-
Liney _Daubenspeck_--and _that_
Nearly killed her Daddy!

TO AN IMPORTUNATE GHOST.

Get gone, thou most uncomfortable ghost!
Thou really dost annoy me with thy thin
Impalpable transparency of grin;
And the vague, shadowy shape of thee almost
Hath vext me beyond boundary and coast
Of my broad patience. Stay thy chattering chin,
And reel the tauntings of thy vain tongue in,
Nor tempt me further with thy vaporish boast
That I am _helpless_ to combat thee! Well,
Have at thee, then! Yet if a doom most dire
Thou wouldst escape, flee whilst thou canst!--Revile
Me not, Miasmic Mist!--Rank Air! _retire_!
One instant longer an thou haunt'st me, I'll
_Inhale_ thee, O thou wraith despicable!

THE QUARREL.

They faced each other: Topaz-brown
And lambent burnt her eyes and shot
Sharp flame at his of amethyst.--
"I hate you! Go, and be forgot
As death forgets!" their glitter _hissed_
(So _seemed_ it) in their hatred. Ho!
Dared any mortal front her so?--
Tempestuous eyebrows knitted down--
Tense nostril, mouth--no muscle slack,--
And black--the suffocating black--
The stifling blackness of her frown!

Ah! but the lifted face of her!
And the twitched lip and tilted head!
Yet he did neither wince nor stir,--
Only--his hands clenched; and, instead
Of words, he answered with a stare
That stammered not in aught it said,
As might his voice if trusted there.

And what--what spake his steady gaze?--
Was there a look that harshly fell
To scoff her?--or a syllable
Of anger?--or the bitter phrase
That myrrhs the honey of love's lips,
Or curdles blood as poison drips?
What made their breasts to heave and swell
As billows under bows of ships
In broken seas on stormy days?
We may not know--nor _they_ indeed--
What mercy found them in their need.

A sudden sunlight smote the gloom;
And round about them swept a breeze,
With faint breaths as of clover-bloom;
A bird was heard, through drone of bees,--
Then, far and clear and eerily,
A child's voice from an orchard-tree--
Then laughter, sweet as the perfume
Of lilacs, could the hearing see.
And he--O Love! he fed thy name
On bruised kisses, while her dim
Deep eyes, with all their inner flame,
Like drowning gems were turned on him.

THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW.

I.

As one in sorrow looks upon
The dead face of a loyal friend,
By the dim light of New Year's dawn
I saw the Old Year end.

Upon the pallid features lay
The dear old smile--so warm and bright
Ere thus its cheer had died away
In ashes of delight.

The hands that I had learned to love
With strength of passion half divine,
Were folded now, all heedless of
The emptiness of mine.

The eyes that once had shed their bright
Sweet looks like sunshine, now were dull,
And ever lidded from the light
That made them beautiful.