THE GLEANER
As children gather daisies down green ways
Mid butterflies and bees,
To-day across the meadows of past days
I gathered memories.
I stored my heart with harvest of lost hours—
With blossoms of spent years;
Leaves that had known the sun of joy, and hours
Drenched with the rain of tears.
And perfumes that were long ago distilled
From April's pink and white,
Again with all their old enchantment, filled
My spirit with delight.
From out the limbo where lost roses go
The place we may not see,
With all its petals sweet and half-ablow,
One rose returned to me.
Where falls the sunlight chequered by the shade
On meadows of the past,
I gathered blossoms that no sun can fade
No winter wind can blast.
THE ROVER
Though I follow a trail to north or south,
Though I travel east or west,
There's a little house on a quiet road
That my hidden heart loves best;
And when my journeys are over and done,
'Tis there I will go to rest.
The snows have bleached it this many a year;
The sun has painted it grey;
The vines hold it close in their clinging arms;
The shadows creep there to stay;
And the wind goes calling through empty rooms
For those who have gone away.
But the roses against the window-pane
Are the roses I used to know;
And the rain on the roof still sings the song
It sang in the long ago,
When I lay me down to sleep in a bed
Little and white and low.