Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1886-12-22
BY ALFRED LORD TESSYsoS.

So your happy suit was blasted-she the
faultless, the divine
And you liken-boyish babble-this boy
love Of yours with mine
|, myself, have often babbled, doubtless,
of a foolish past,
Babble babble! Our old England may go
down in babble at last
Curse him, curse your fellow-yictim, call
him dotard in your rage,
Eyes that lured doting boyhood well
might fool dotard's age
Tilted for wealthier; wealthier; yet per-
haps she was not wise,
remember how you kissed the miniature
with those sweet eyes.
In the Hall there hangs painting, Amy's
arms about my neck,
Happy children in a sunbeam sitting on
the ribs of wreck.
In my life there was a picture, she that
clasped my neck had flown;
| was left within the shadow, sitting on
the wreck alone.
Yours has been slighter ailment; will
YOU sicken for her sake?
You? Not you Your modern amourist
is of easier, earthier make.
Amy loved me, Amy failed me, Amy was
timid child
But your Judith, but your worldling, she
had never driven me wild,
She that holds the diamond necklace
dearer than the golden ring,
She that finds winter sunset tairer than
morn offspring,
She that in her heart is broOding on his
briefer lease of life,
While she vows It'll death shall part us, +"
she the would-be widow-wite.
She the worldling, born Of worldlings,
Father, Mother. BE content,
Even the homely farm can teach us there
is something in descent.
Yonder in that chapel, slowly sinking now
into the ground,
Lies the warrior, my forefather, with his
feet upon the hound.
Crossed fog once he sailed the sea, to crush
the Moslem in his pride
Dead the warrior, dead his glory, dead the
cause in which he died.
Yet how often and Amy in the moulder-
ing isle have stood
Gazing for one pensivc moment on that
founder OF our blood.
There again stood to-day, and where of
old we knelt in prayer,
Close beneath the easement crimson, with
the shield of Locksley there,
All in white Italian marble, looking still
as if she smiled,
Lies my Amy, dead in childbirth, dead
the mother, dead the child.
Dead, and sixty years ago; and dead her
aged husband now.
! this old, white-headed dreamer stopped
and kissed her marble brow.
Gone the fires of youth, the follies, furies,
curses, passionate tears,
Gone like fires and floods and earthquakes
ofthe planets dawning years,
Fires that shook me once but now to
silent ashes fallen away,
Cod upon the dead volcano sleeps the
CLEAN of dying day
Gone the tyrant of my youth, and mute
below the chancel stones,
All his virtues" forgive them, black in
white above his bones
Gone, the comrades of my bivouac, some
in fight against the foe,
Some through age and slow diseases gone
as all on earth Will 90.
Gone. with whom for forty years my life in
golden sequence ran,
She, with all the charm Of woman, she
with all the breadth of man,
Strong in will, and rich in wisdom, Edith
loyal, lowly, sweet,
Feminine to her inmost heart and feminine
to her tender feet;
Ear,. ,,np,op nf ,ar,, ,-o,,,, ,,,r,o ~ oil
ing body and mind,
She that linked again the broken chain
that bound Inc to my kind,
Here to-day was Amy with me while
wandered down the coast,
Near us Edith's holy shadow smiling at
the slighted ghost
Gone, our sailor son, thy father Leonard,
early lost at sea,
Thou alone, nv boy, of Amy's kin and
mine are left to me.
Gone, thy tender-natured mother, weary
ing to be left alone,
Pining for the stronger heart that once had
beat beside her own,
Truth--for Truth is Truth-he worshipt,
being true as he was brave;
GOod-for Good is GoOd-he followed, yet
he looked beyond the grave.
Wiser there than you, that crowning bar
ren Death as lord Of all,
Deem this Over-tragic dramas closing cur
tain is the pail.
Beautiful was death in him who saw the
death but kept the deck,
Saving women and their babes and sink
ing with the sinking wreck.
Gone forever-Ever? No! For since our
dying race began,
Ever, ever, and Forever. was the leading
light of man,
These that in barbarian burials killed the
slave and slew the wife
Felt within themselves the sacred passion
of the second life.
Indian warriors dreamed Of ampler
hunting grounds beyond the night
Even the black Australian dying hopes
shall return white.
Truth for truth and good far goc Be
good the true the pure, the jas.
Take the charm forever from them and
they crumple into duE;
Gone the cry of Forward, Forward, lost
within growing gloom,
Lost or only heard in silence from the
silence Of . tomb;
Half the marvels ofmy moaning triumphs
over time and space,
Stalled by frequence, shrunk by usage into
commonest commonplace.
Forward rang the voices then, and Of the
many mine was one;
Let Us hush this cry Of Forward till ten
thousand years have gone.
For among the vanished races old Assy-
rian Kings would fly
Captives whom they caught in battle,
iron-hearted victors their.
Ages afterwhile in Aria, he that led the
wild Moguls,
Timur, built his ghastly tower Of eighty
thousand human skulls.
Then aud here in Edwards time, an age Of
noblest English names
Christian conquerors took and flung the
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