It was August the third; And quite soft was the skies: Which it might be inferred That Ah Sin was likewise; Yet he played it that day upon William And me in a way I despise. Which we had a small game, He did not understand; But he smiled as he sat by the table, With the smile that was childlike and bland. Yet the cards they were stocked At the state of Nye's sleeve; Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers, And the same with intent to deceive. But the hands that were played Were quite frightful to see.- Then I looked up at Nye, And he gazed upon me; And he rose with a sigh, And said, "Can this be? We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor" And he went for that heathen In the scene that ensued I did not take a hand; But the floor it was strewed Like the leaves on the strand With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding, In the game "he did not understand." In his sleeves, which were long, Yet I state but the facts; And we found on his nails, which were taper, What is frequent in tapers - that's wax. As I sit at my desk by the window, when the garden with dew is wet, On the morning incense rises the breath of the mignonette, Laden with tender memories of thirty years ago, When she gave me her worthless promise, and we loved each other so, Till her tough old worldly mother let her maiden charms be sold To a miser, as hard and yellow as his hoard of shining gold. As in Central Park I met them on their cheerful morning ride, As she snarled at her henpecked husband who was crouching by her side, I thought in the dust of the pathway, "I have the best of you yet!" Far better the dream of a fadeless love in the breath of the mignonette, And little Alice and Mabel, and the children that might have been, Come dancing out on the paper at a twirl of the magic pen, Not a horrid boy among them, but a bevy of little girls With great brown eyes, love-shining, 'mid a halo of golden curls. They never grow old or naughty; and in them I fail to see The slightest fault or taint of sin which could have been charged XI. POETRY OF TERROR. "There are points from which we can command our life, When the soul sweeps the Future like a glass, And coming things full freighted with our fate Jut out dark on the offing of the mind."- BAILEY: Festus. |