“THROUGH TIME AND BITTER DISTANCE” [3]

Unknown to you, I walk the cheerless shore. 
  The cutting blast, the hurl of biting brine
May freeze, and still, and bind the waves at war,
  Ere you will ever know, O!  Heart of mine,
That I have sought, reflected in the blue
  Of these sea depths, some shadow of your eyes;
Have hoped the laughing waves would sing of you,
  But this is all my starving sight descries—­

I

Far out at sea a sail
  Bends to the freshening breeze,
Yields to the rising gale
  That sweeps the seas;

II

Yields, as a bird wind-tossed,
  To saltish waves that fling
Their spray, whose rime and frost
  Like crystals cling

III

To canvas, mast and spar,
  Till, gleaming like a gem,
She sinks beyond the far
  Horizon’s hem.

IV

Lost to my longing sight,
  And nothing left to me
Save an oncoming night,—­
  An empty sea.

  [3] For this title the author is indebted to Mr. Charles G. D.
  Roberts.  It occurs in his sonnet, “Rain.”

AT HALF-MAST

You didn’t know Billy, did you?  Well, Bill was one of the boys,
The greatest fellow you ever seen to racket an’ raise a noise,—­
An’ sing! say, you never heard singing ’nless you heard Billy sing. 
I used to say to him, “Billy, that voice that you’ve got there’d bring
A mighty sight more bank-notes to tuck away in your vest,
If only you’d go on the concert stage instead of a-ranchin’ West.” 
An’ Billy he’d jist go laughin’, and say as I didn’t know
A robin’s whistle in springtime from a barnyard rooster’s crow. 
But Billy could sing, an’ I sometimes think that voice lives anyhow,—­
That perhaps Bill helps with the music in the place he’s gone to now.

The last time that I seen him was the day he rode away;
He was goin’ acrost the plain to catch the train for the East next day. 
’Twas the only time I ever seen poor Bill that he didn’t laugh
Or sing, an’ kick up a rumpus an’ racket around, and chaff,
For he’d got a letter from his folks that said for to hurry home,
For his mother was dyin’ away down East an’ she wanted Bill to come. 
Say, but the feller took it hard, but he saddled up right away,
An’ started across the plains to take the train for the East, next day. 
Sometimes I lie awake a-nights jist a-thinkin’ of the rest,
For that was the great big blizzard day, when the wind come down from west,
An’ the snow piled up like mountains an’ we couldn’t put foot outside,
But jist set into the shack an’ talked of Bill on his lonely ride. 
We talked of the laugh he threw us as he went at the break o’ day,
An’ we talked of the poor old woman dyin’ a thousand mile away.