Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
He lay on the desert a dying man,
Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.”
That’s a grand thing, Jack. How does it go?—
“With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
And the film of death o’er his fading eyes,
He saw the sun go down on the sand,”’—
The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn—
‘“And he slept and never saw it rise,”’
—speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time.
Then maybe he’d stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,
with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
‘“What mattered the sand or the whit’ning chalk,
The blighted herbage or blackened log,
The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?”
They don’t matter much, do they, Jack?’
‘Damned if I think they do, Boss!’ I’d say.
‘“The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms’ food
Where once they have gone where we all must go.”’
Once he repeated the poem containing the lines—
‘“Love, when we wandered here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather—
God surely loved us a little then.”
Beautiful lines those, Jack.
“Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
And the blue sea over the white sand rolled—
Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur’—
How does it go, Jack?’ He stood up and turned his face to the light, but not before I had a glimpse of it. I think that the saddest eyes on earth are mostly women’s eyes, but I’ve seen few so sad as the Boss’s were just then.