Auf Wiedersehen
"Farewell," I said, to the friend I loved, and my eyes were filled with tears; "I know you'll come to my heart again, in a few brief, hurried years!" Ah, many come up the garden path, and knock at my cottage door, but the friend I loved when my heart was young, comes back to that heart no more. "Farewell!" I cried to the gentle bird, whose music had filled the dawn; "you fly away, but you'll sing again, when the winter's snows are gone." Ah, the bright birds sway on the apple-boughs, and sing as they sang before; but the bird I loved, with the golden voice, shall sing to my heart no more! "Farewell!" I said to the Thomas Cat, I threw in the gurgling creek, all weighted down with a smoothing iron, and a hundredweight of brick. "You'll not come back, if I know myself, from the silent, sunless shore!" Then I journeyed home, and that blamed old cat was there by the kitchen door!
After The Game
When I cash in, and this poor race is run, my chores performed, and all my errands done, I know that folks who mock my efforts here, will weeping bend above my lowly bier, and bring large garlands, worth three bucks a throw, and paw the ground in ecstasy of woe. And friends will wear crape bow-knots on their tiles, while I look down (or up) a million miles, and wonder why those people never knew how smooth I was until my spirit flew. When I cash in I will not care a yen for all the praise that's heaped upon me then; serene and silent, in my handsome box, I shall not heed the laudatory talks, and all the pomp and all the vain display, will just be pomp and feathers thrown away. So tell me now, while I am on the earth, your estimate of my surprising worth; O tell me what a looloo-bird I am, and fill me full of taffy and of jam!