THERE’S A LAUGH.
There’s the laugh of the fiend that shrivels the heart,
That burns out the eyes from their sockets of fire,
That crackles the skin and parches the breath
And bellows and shrieks with demoniac ire.
There’s the laugh of the hobgoblin, demon of night,
That frightens the children to silence their sobs,
That rings in their ears to the end of life,
And at night in their hearts like the death-watch throbs.
There’s the wild, screeching laugh from the madman’s lips
When his eyes wildly start from his reechy brain,
That haunts us, tho’ try to forget as we will,
And pierces the heart with a dagger of pain.
There’s the unearthly laugh and the sickening leer
Of the idiot—wretched Unfortunate! dead
Before born, the live sepulchre of unknown crimes,
The tomb of the lives generations have led!
There’s the blasting, blistering, withering laugh
That blights e’en the heart wherein it is born,
That bubbles and sputters and hisses and spits
As it falls from the scorching lips of scorn.
There’s a strange, weird laugh, even tho’ from a child,
That gurgles and sticks in the sleeper’s thick breath,
That startles the shivering silence with awe
And dies in the throat like the rattle of death.
There’s a laugh, like the wind’s cracked whistle, that creaks
And squeaks on the worn-out pipes of old age;
And a sigh heaves up from the heart full sad,
For we know what the ominous sounds presage.
There’s the free, wild laugh that bounds as the deer—
As free as the leap of the hart and as wild—
’Tis the laugh that I love with my heart and my soul,
The sweet, wild laugh of an innocent child.
There’s the laugh that I love, the balm of tired hearts,
That quiets the fluttering temples of care;
’Tis the soft, soothing laugh from the sweet lips of Love,
And it falls like a blessing that answers prayer.
There’s the sweetest of laughs full of music divine
That gladdens the heart and the throbbing brain;
I would give—oh what would I not, were it mine,
But to hear the sweet laugh of my mother again.