Sometime I may need it so,
Groping somewhere in the night,
It will seem to me as though
Just a touch, however light,
Would make all the darkness
day,
And along some sunny way
Lead me through an April-shower
Of my tears to this fair hour.
O the present is too sweet
To go on forever thus!
Round the corner of the street
Who can say what waits for us?—
Meeting—greeting,
night and day,
Faring each the selfsame way—
Still somewhere the path must
end.—
Reach your hand to me, my
friend!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
TO MY OLD FRIEND, WILLIAM LEACHMAN
Fer forty year and better you have been a friend to
me,
Through days of sore afflictions and dire adversity,
You allus had a kind word of counsul to impart,
Which was like a healin’ ’intment to the
sorrow of my hart.
When I burried my first womern, William Leachman,
it was you
Had the only consolation that I could listen to—
Fer I knowed you had gone through it and had rallied
from the blow,
And when you said I’d do the same, I knowed
you’d ort to know.
But that time I’ll long remember; how I wundered
here and thare—
Through the settin’-room and kitchen, and out
in the open air—
And the snowflakes whirlin’, whirlin’,
and the fields a frozen glare,
And the neghbors’ sleds and wagons congergatin’
ev’rywhare.
I turned my eyes to’rds heaven, but the sun
was hid away;
I turned my eyes to’rds earth again, but all
was cold and gray;
And the clock, like ice a-crackin’, clickt the
icy hours in two—
And my eyes’d never thawed out ef it hadn’t
been fer you!
We set thare by the smoke-house—me and
you out thare alone—
Me a-thinkin’—you a-talkin’
in a soothin’ undertone—
You a-talkin’—me a-thinkin’
of the summers long ago,
And a-writin’ “Marthy—Marthy”
with my finger in the snow!
[Illustration]
William Leachman, I can see you jest as plane as I
could then;
And your hand is on my shoulder, and you rouse me
up again,
And I see the tears a-drippin’ from your own
eyes, as you say:
“Be rickonciled and bear it—we but
linger fer a day!”
At the last Old Settlers’ Meetin’ we went
j’intly, you and me—
Your hosses and my wagon, as you wanted it to be;
And sence I can remember, from the time we’ve
neghbored here,
In all sich friendly actions you have double-done
your sheer.
It was better than the meetin’, too, that nine-mile
talk we had
Of the times when we first settled here and travel
was so bad;
When we had to go on hoss-back, and sometimes on “Shanks’s
mare,”
And “blaze” a road fer them behind that
had to travel thare.
And now we was a-trottin’ ’long a level
gravel pike,
In a big two-hoss road-wagon, jest as easy as you
like—
Two of us on the front seat, and our wimmern-folks
behind,
A-settin’ in theyr Winsor-cheers in perfect
peace of mind!