THE SIGNBOARD
I will paint you a sign, rumseller,
And hang it above your door;
A truer and better signboard
Than ever you had before.
I will paint with the skill of a master,
And many shall pause to see
This wonderful piece of painting,
So like the reality.
I will paint yourself, rumseller,
As you wait for that fair young boy,
Just in the morning of manhood,
A mother’s pride and joy.
He has no thought of stopping,
But you greet him with a smile,
And you seem so blithe and friendly,
That he pauses to chat awhile.
I will paint you again, rumseller,
I will paint you as you stand,
With a foaming glass of liquor
Extended in your hand.
He wavers, but you urge him—
Drink, pledge me just this one!
And he takes the glass and drains it,
And the hellish work is done.
And next I will paint a drunkard—
Only a year has flown,
But into that loathsome creature
The fair young boy has grown.
The work was sure and rapid.
I will paint him as he lies
In a torpid, drunken slumber,
Under the wintry skies.
I will paint the form of the mother
As she kneels at her darling’s side,
Her beautiful boy that was dearer
Than all the world beside.
I will paint the shape of a coffin,
Labelled with one word—“Lost”
I will paint all this, rumseller,
And will paint it free of cost.
The sin and the shame and the sorrow,
The crime and the want and the woe
That are born there in your workshop,
No hand can paint, you know.
But I’ll paint you a sign, rumseller,
And many shall pause to view
This wonderful swinging signboard,
So terribly, fearfully true.
A MAN’S REPENTANCE
(Intended for recitation at club dinners.)
To-night when I came from the club at eleven,
Under the gaslight I saw a face—
A woman’s face! and I swear to heaven
It looked like the ghastly ghost of—Grace!
And Grace? why, Grace was fair; and I tarried,
And loved her a season as we men do.
And then—but pshaw! why, of course, she is married,
Has a husband, and doubtless a babe or two.
She was perfectly calm on the day we parted;
She spared me a scene, to my great surprise.
“She wasn’t the kind to be broken-hearted,”
I remember she said, with a spark in her eyes.
I was tempted, I know, by her proud defiance,
To make good my promise there and then.
But the world would have called it a mésalliance!
I dreaded the comments and sneers of men.
So I left her to grieve for a faithless lover,
And to hide her heart from the cold world’s sight
As women do hide them, the wide earth over;
My God! was it Grace that I saw to-night?
I thought of her married, and often with pity,
A poor man’s wife in some dull place.
And now to know she is here in the city,
Under the gaslight, and with that face!
Yet I knew it at once, in spite of the daubing
Of paint and powder, and she knew me;
She drew a quick breath that was almost sobbing
And shrank in the shade so I should not see.
There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded
Her soul is at war with the life she has led.
As I looked on that face so strangely faded
I wonder God did not strike me dead.
While I have been happy and gay and jolly,
Received by the very best people in town,
That girl whom I led in the way to folly,
Has gone on recklessly down and down.
* * * * *
Two o’clock, and no sleep has found me;
That face I saw in the street-lamp’s light
Peers everywhere out from the shadows around me—
I know how a murderer feels to-night.
ARISTARCHUS
(THE NAME OF THE MOUNTAIN IN THE MOON)
It was long and long ago our love began;
It is something all unmeasured by time’s span:
In an era and a spot, by the Modern World forgot,
We were lovers, ere God named us, Maid and Man.
Like the memory of music made by streams,
All the beauty of that other love life seems;
But I always thought it so, and at last I know, I know,
We were lovers in the Land of Silver Dreams.
When the moon was at the full, I found the place;
Out and out, across the seas of shining space,
On a quest that could not fail, I unfurled my memory’s sail
And cast anchor in the Bay of Love’s First Grace.
At the foot of Aristarchus lies this bay,
(Oh! the wonder of that mountain far away!)
And the Land of Silver Dreams all about it shines and gleams,
Where we loved before God fashioned night or day.
We were souls, in eerie bodies made of light;
We were winged, and we could speed from height to height;
And we built a nest called Hope, on the sheer Moon Mountain Slope,
Where we sat, and watched new worlds wheel into sight.
And we saw this little planet known as Earth,
When the mighty Mother Chaos gave it birth;
But in love’s conceit we thought all those worlds from space were brought,
For no greater aim or purpose than our mirth.
And we laughed in love’s abandon, and we sang,
Till the echoing peals of Aristarchus rang,
As hot hissing comets came, and white suns burst into flame,
And a myriad worlds from out the darkness sprang.
I can show you, when the Moon is at its best,
Aristarchus, and the spot we made our nest,
Oh! I always wondered why, when the Moon was in the sky,
I was stirred with such strange longing, and unrest.
And I knew the subtle beauty and the force
Of our love was never bounded by Earth’s course.
So with Memory’s sail unfurled, I went cruising past this world,
And I followed till I traced it to its source.