The Old Soldier's Story: Poems and Prose Sketches. Riley James Whitcomb

      The sea was breaking at my feet,

      And looking out across the tide,

      Where placid waves and heaven meet,

      I thought me of the Other Side.

      For on the beach on which I stood

      Were wastes of sands, and wash, and roar,

      Low clouds, and gloom, and solitude,

      And wrecks, and ruins – nothing more.

      "O, tell me if beyond the sea

      A heavenly port there is!" I cried,

      And back the echoes laughingly

      "There is! there is!" replied.

      I grow so weary, someway, of all thing

      That love and loving have vouchsafed to me,

      Since now all dreamed-of sweets of ecstasy

      Am I possessed of: The caress that clings —

      The lips that mix with mine with murmurings

      No language may interpret, and the free,

      Unfettered brood of kisses, hungrily

      Feasting in swarms on honeyed blossomings

      Of passion's fullest flower – For yet I miss

      The essence that alone makes love divine —

      The subtle flavoring no tang of this

      Weak wine of melody may here define: —

      A something found and lost in the first kiss

      A lover ever poured through lips of mine.

      A something quiet and subdued

      In all the faces that we meet;

      A sense of rest, a solitude

      O'er all the crowded street;

      The very noises seem to be

      Crude utterings of harmony,

      And all we hear, and all we see,

      Has in it something sweet.

      Thoughts come to us as from a dream

      Of some long-vanished yesterday;

      The voices of the children seem

      Like ours, when young as they;

      The hand of Charity extends

      To meet Misfortune's, where it blends,

      Veiled by the dusk – and oh, my friends,

      Would it were dusk alway!

      We sprang for the side-holts – my gripsack and I —

      It dangled – I dangled – we both dangled by.

      "Good speed!" cried mine host, as we landed at last —

      "Speed?" chuckled the watch we went lumbering past;

      Behind shut the switch, and out through the rear door

      I glared while we waited a half hour more.

      I had missed the express that went thundering down

      Ten minutes before to my next lecture town,

      And my only hope left was to catch this "wild freight,"

      Which the landlord remarked was "most luckily late —

      But the twenty miles distance was easily done,

      If they run half as fast as they usually run!"

      Not a word to each other – we struck a snail's pace —

      Conductor and brakeman ne'er changing a place —

      Save at the next watering-tank, where they all

      Got out – strolled about – cut their names on the wall,

      Or listlessly loitered on down to the pile

      Of sawed wood just beyond us, to doze for a while.

      'Twas high noon at starting, but while we drew near

      "Arcady" I said, "We'll not make it, I fear!

      I must strike Aix by eight, and it's three o'clock now;

      Let me stoke up that engine, and I'll show you how!"

      At which the conductor, with patience sublime,

      Smiled up from his novel with, "Plenty of time!"

      At "Trask," as we jolted stock-still as a stone,

      I heard a cow bawl in a five o'clock tone;

      And the steam from the saw-mill looked misty and thin,

      And the snarl of the saw had been stifled within:

      And a frowzy-haired boy, with a hat full of chips,

      Came out and stared up with a smile on his lips.

      At "Booneville," I groaned, "Can't I telegraph on?"

      No! Why? "'Cause the telegraph-man had just gone

      To visit his folks in Almo" – and one heard

      The sharp snap of my teeth through the throat of a word,

      That I dragged for a mile and a half up the track,

      And strangled it there, and came skulkingly back.

      Again we were off. It was twilight, and more,

      As we rolled o'er a bridge where beneath us the roar

      Of a river came up with so wooing an air

      I mechanic'ly strapped myself fast in my chair

      As a brakeman slid open the door for more light,

      Saying: "Captain, brace up, for your town is in sight!"

      "How they'll greet me!" – and all in a moment – "chewang!"

      And the train stopped again, with a bump and a bang.

      What was it? "The section-hands, just in advance."

      And I spit on my hands, and I rolled up my pants,

      And I clumb like an imp that the fiends had let loose

      Up out of the depths of that deadly caboose.

      I ran the train's length – I lept safe to the ground —

      And the legend still lives that for five miles around

      They heard my voice hailing the hand-car that yanked

      Me aboard at my bidding, and gallantly cranked,

      As I grovelled and clung, with