RECOLLECTIONS by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON

I SEE a lad deserted by his mates,
Because his ways were little to their mind,
Turn sick at heart, shed tears to make him blind;
So sad, that never have the after-fates
Brought pain that pinched more close, a day more dark,
Though many since have sullen been and stark;
And yet we call our childhood soft and kind!

Again I see him, stretched along the floor,
Reading with bated breath and blue eyes keen
Of her the mystic maiden called Undine;
Of how she won a knight beside the shore,
With looks that stirred his heart to nameless fears.
The reader burst into a storm of tears
That day she sank beneath the waters green.

Now, older grown, but still a very lad,
He stands beside a woman, strokes her hair
And touches timidly the love-locks there,
Laying his soul before her beauty glad,
Though she be twice his years. He draws his breath
More worshipfully than to his hour of death
He will again -- a lad's first love is fair!

One night, he lies abed in wakefulness,
The while his mother plays and sings below
Some dim sweet melody of long ago,
And sad withal, beyond his saddest guess;
Until the childish heart swells big with pain.
Through all the years it sounds for him again,
That mother's voice, that music sobbing so!

And last, one day stands out from those gone by,
And those that followed, as a single tree
Stands out, alone and lonesome utterly,
Upon a plain against a flaming sky.
That hour his father died; he made no sound,
But in a secret place upon the ground
They found him -- dazed and dumb that this could be.

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