"What can I do to make you glad—
As glad as glad can be,
Till your clear eyes seem
Like the rays that gleam
And glint through a dew-decked tree?—
Will it please you, dear, that I now begin
A grand old air on my violin?"
And she spoke again in the following way,—
"Yes, oh yes, it would please me, sir;
I would be so glad you'd play
Some grand old march—in character,—
And then as you march away
I will no longer thus be sad,
But oh, so glad—so glad—so glad!"
MAN'S DEVOTION
A lover said, "O Maiden, love me well,
For I must go away:
And should ANOTHER ever come to tell
Of love—What WILL you say?"
And she let fall a royal robe of hair
That folded on his arm
And made a golden pillow for her there;
Her face—as bright a charm
As ever setting held in kingly crown—
Made answer with a look,
And reading it, the lover bended down,
And, trusting, "kissed the book."
He took a fond farewell and went away.
And slow the time went by—
So weary—dreary was it, day by day
To love, and wait, and sigh.
She kissed his pictured face sometimes, and said:
"O Lips, so cold and dumb,
I would that you would tell me, if not dead,
Why, why do you not come?"
The picture, smiling, stared her in the face
Unmoved—e'en with the touch
Of tear-drops—HERS—bejeweling the case—
'Twas plain—she loved him much.
And, thus she grew to think of him as gay
And joyous all the while,
And SHE was sorrowing—"Ah, welladay!"
But pictures ALWAYS smile!
And years—dull years—in dull monotony
As ever went and came,
Still weaving changes on unceasingly,
And changing, changed her name.