XIX.

I had A guinea golden.

I had a guinea golden;
  I lost it in the sand,
And though the sum was simple,
  And pounds were in the land,
Still had it such a value
  Unto my frugal eye,
That when I could not find it
  I sat me down to sigh.

I had a crimson robin
  Who sang full many a day,
But when the woods were painted
  He, too, did fly away. 
Time brought me other robins, —­
  Their ballads were the same, —­
Still for my missing troubadour
  I kept the ‘house at hame.’

I had a star in heaven;
  One Pleiad was its name,
And when I was not heeding
  It wandered from the same. 
And though the skies are crowded,
  And all the night ashine,
I do not care about it,
  Since none of them are mine.

My story has a moral: 
  I have a missing friend, —­
Pleiad its name, and robin,
  And guinea in the sand, —­
And when this mournful ditty,
  Accompanied with tear,
Shall meet the eye of traitor
  In country far from here,
Grant that repentance solemn
  May seize upon his mind,
And he no consolation
  Beneath the sun may find.

Note. —­ This poem may have had, like many others, a personal origin.  It is more than probable that it was sent to some friend travelling in Europe, a dainty reminder of letter-writing delinquencies.

XX.

Saturday afternoon.

From all the jails the boys and girls
  Ecstatically leap, —­
Beloved, only afternoon
  That prison doesn’t keep.

They storm the earth and stun the air,
  A mob of solid bliss. 
Alas! that frowns could lie in wait
  For such a foe as this!

XXI.

Few get enough, —­ enough is one;
  To that ethereal throng
Have not each one of us the right
  To stealthily belong?

XXII.

Upon the gallows hung a wretch,
  Too sullied for the hell
To which the law entitled him. 
  As nature’s curtain fell
The one who bore him tottered in,
  For this was woman’s son. 
‘’T was all I had,’ she stricken gasped;
  Oh, what a livid boon!

XXIII.

The lost thought.

I felt a clearing in my mind
  As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
  But could not make them fit.

The thought behind I strove to join
  Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
  Like balls upon a floor.

XXIV.

Reticence.

The reticent volcano keeps
  His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
  To no precarious man.