Who, in a spirit of supersensitive self-abnegation, had placed upon his tombstone that here lay “one whose name is writ in water.”
If your name is writ in water,
As your humble tombstone saith,
Then it forms a crystal fountain
Born to mock at mortal death.
If your name is writ in water,
’Tis the water of the stream
Where the wise of all the nations
Stoop to drink and stay to dream.
If your name is writ in water,
It has flowed into the sea
Of the ages past and present—
And of Immortality.
CHRISTMAS
Childish prattle and merry laugh
And the joy of Christmas-tide,
And the old are young as the gay bells fling
Their messages far and wide.
Steaming pudding and lighted tree
And the litter of scattered toys,
We’re all of us children again to-day
Along o’ the girls and boys.
(Back behind the happy faces
Lifts another looking through?
Drop your merry mask and tell me
What does Christmas mean to you?)
Laughter long of the joyous throng,
Festival, fun and feast,
And there’s never a care in the echoing air
In the joy of a year released.