Yes, dear departed, cherished days, …Could Memory’s hand restore
Your morning light, your evening rays, …From Time’s gray arm once more.
Then might this restless heart be still, …This straining eye might close,
And hope but fainting pinions fold, …While the fair phantoms rose.
But, like a child in ocean’s arms, …We strive against the stream,
Each moment farther from the shore …Where life’s young fountains gleam;
Each moment fainter wave the fields, …And wider rolls the sea;
The mist grows dark, – the sun goes down, – …Day breaks, – and where are we?
No matter what I say, …All that I really love
Is the rain that flattens on the bay, …And the eel-grass in the cove;
The jingle-shells that lie and bleach …At the tide-line, and the trace
Of higher tides along the beach: …Nothing in this place.
The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung
And cut a flower beside a ground bird’s nest
Before it stained a single human breast.
The stricken flower bent double and so hung.
And still the bird revisited her young.
A butterfly its fall had dispossessed
A moment sought in air his flower of rest,
Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.
On the bare upland pasture there had spread
O’ernight ‘twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread
And straining cables wet with silver dew.
A sudden passing bullet shook it dry.
The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly,
But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.
(sent in Christmas cards 2015) —
The colors red and green, those two,
Are Christmas colors, yuletide’s cue,
As though its season after fall
Invites us to another ball.
Green is the holly; green the tree,
And green some stockings that we see.
Green is the mistletoe we hang;
From which some Christmas kissing sprang.
Red are the balls upon the tree;
Red are some stockings filled with glee.
Red’s Santa in his jolly suit,
Until he slides down chimney’s chute.
When put together, red and green,
Have one important thing they mean:
A treasure stored up in the heart
That one adds to, but will not part.
We often dream of one more hue
A blanket thicker than the dew –
A coat of snow that covers all,
A Christmas white that will enthrall.
But topped or not with whipping cream,
Our faces fill with Christmas gleam.
It leaves for us a colored print
Of just how much the season meant.
Once I was happy, but now I’m forlorn,
Like an old coat, all tattered and torn,
Left in this wide world to fret and to mourn,
Betrayed by a wife in her teens.
Oh, the girl that I loved she was handsome,
I tried all I knew her to please,
But I could not please one quarter as well
As the man on the flying trapeze.
Chorus:
He would fly through the air
With the greatest of ease,
This daring young man
On the flying trapeze;
His movements were graceful,
All girls he could please,
And my love he purloined away.
Her father and mother were both on my side,
And very hard tried to make her my bride.
Her father he sighed, and her mother she cried
To see her throw herself away.
‘Twas all no avail, she’d go there every night
And throw him bouquets on the stage,
Which caused him to meet her; how he ran me down
To tell you would take a whole page.
One night I as usual called at her dear home,
Found there her father and mother alone,
I asked for my love, and soon they made known
To my horror that she’d run away.
She’d packed up her goods and eloped in the night
With him with the greatest of ease;
From three stories high he had lowered her down
To the ground on his flying trapeze.
Some months after this, I chanced in a hall,
Was greatly surprised to see on the wall
A bill in red letters that did my heart gall,
That she was appearing with him.
He taught her gymnastics and dressed her in tights
To help him to live at his ease,
And made her assume a masculine name,
And now she goes on the trapeze.
Chorus:
She floats through the air
With the greatest of ease,
You’d think her a man
On the flying trapeze.
She does all the work
While he takes his ease,
And that’s what became of my love.
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A different version was sung in the movie “It Happened One Night”.
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are both in the scene. (3:32)
The Bard on the Hill 