Banditti.
UPON Life's lonely highway, robber bands
Of grim-faced years seize with relentless hands
Each traveler, and wrest from out his grasp
The treasures that he fain would closer clasp.
None can escape. Each year demands its toll,
Till robbed of youth, we grope toward the goal,
Halting and blind, of all but life bereft,
And death claims that—the only boon that's left.
The Silent Brotherhood.
ON through the cloisters of eternity
The years, like monks, in slow procession pass,
Telling their rosary beads, the golden days,
With penance prayers of dark and dismal nights.
Hooded and cowled, with silence on they pass,
Nor will they pause until their vesper rings
A solemn curfew at the sunset hour,
When all the fires of life are buried low,
And all the worlds drop down upon their knees,
To say a last mass ere the death of Time.
Spendthrift.
HE was a king one time,
And they wrapped the ermine around him,
And the bells rang out when they crowned him,
Rang with a joyful chime.
And he sat on a throne!
The wealth that a world could offer
Was heaped in the New Year's coffer,
For the world was his own.
He was a spendthrift though,
And the coins of his lavish giving
Were the golden moments of living,—
Coins that he squandered so.
He is a beggar now.
In the night and the storm he lingers,
No gold in his prodigal fingers,—
King with the uncrowned brow.
Nothing to call his own!
His fortune scattered behind him;
Death empty-handed shall find him,—
A New Year takes his throne.