Amen,--for our all seems gone
Out of the hitherwhere into the Yon.

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[Illustration]

JACK-IN-THE-BOX

_(Grandfather, musing.)_

In childish days! O memory,
You bring such curious things to me!--
Laughs to the lip--tears to the eye,
In looking on the gifts that lie
Like broken playthings scattered o'er
Imagination's nursery floor!
Did these old hands once click the key
That let "Jack's" box-lid upward fly,
And that blear-eyed, fur-whiskered elf
Leap, as though frightened at himself,
And quiveringly lean and stare
At me, his jailer, laughing there?

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A child then! Now--I only know
They call me very old; and so
They will not let me have my way,--
But uselessly I sit all day
Here by the chimney-jamb, and poke
The lazy fire, and smoke and smoke,
And watch the wreaths swoop up the flue,
And chuckle--ay, I often do--
Seeing again, all vividly,
Jack-in-the-box leap, as in glee
To see how much he looks like me!

... They talk. I can't hear what they say--
But I am glad, clean through and through
Sometimes, in fancying that they
Are saying, "Sweet, that fancy strays
In age back to our childish days!"

[Illustration]

THE BOYS

Where are they?--the friends of my childhood enchanted--
The clear, laughing eyes looking back in my own,
And the warm, chubby fingers my palms have so wanted,
As when we raced over
Pink pastures of clover,
And mocked the quail's whir and the bumblebee's drone?

Have the breezes of time blown their blossomy faces
Forever adrift down the years that are flown?
Am I never to see them romp back to their places,
Where over the meadow,
In sunshine and shadow,
The meadow-larks trill, and the bumblebees drone?

Where are they? Ah! dim in the dust lies the clover;
The whippoorwill's call has a sorrowful tone,
And the dove's--I have wept at it over and over;--
I want the glad luster
Of youth, and the cluster
Of faces asleep where the bumblebees drone!

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[Illustration]

IT'S _GOT_ TO BE

"When it's _got_ to be,"--like! always say,
As I notice the years whiz past,
And know each day is a yesterday,
When we size it up, at last,--
Same as I said when my _boyhood_ went
And I knowed _we_ had to quit,--
"It's _got_ to be, and it's _goin'_ to be!"--
So I said "Good-by" to _it_.

It's _got_ to be, and it's _goin'_ to be!
So at least I always try
To kind o' say in a hearty