Debris by Madge Morris Wagner (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📕

slower now,
And I know she is leaving her good-night kiss
On its eyes, and cheek, and brow
From her rocking, rocking, rocking,
I wonder would she start,
Could she know, through the wall between us,
She is rocking on a heart.
While my empty arms are aching
For a form they may not press
And my emptier heart is breaking
In its desolate loneliness
I list to the rocking, rocking,
In the room just next to mine,
And breathe a prayer in silence,
At a mother's broken shrine,
For the woman who rocks her baby
In the room just next to mine.


"I DON'T CARE."

"I don't care," we hear it oft
And oft, the words are seeming fair;
But many a heartache lies beneath
A careless "I don't care!"

In every age, from every tongue,
The vain assertions fell;
But oh, trust not the cheating words,
For never truth they tell!
Hearts may grow sick with hope deferred,
Be crushed with black despair,
But lips, too proud to own defeat,
Will whisper, "I don't care!"

A thoughtless friend flings out in jest--
As jesters always do--
A deadly shaft you wince beneath,
You know the story's true;
But while the dart has pierced your heart,
And poisoned, rankles there,
You look amused, and answer with
A smiling, "I don't care!"

When Fortune's favors are withdrawn,
And friends like shadows fled,
When all your fondest dreams are gone,
Your dearest hopes are dead,
You curse the fickle goddess, then,
Who wrought you such despair,
Yet hide chagrin beneath a frown,
And mutter, "I don't care!"

The veteran, battle-scarred, who fills
A nation's honored place,
Feels keener than his saber's point,
Unmerited disgrace.
With indignation all aflame
He meets some rival's stare;
But for all answer gives the worlds
A freezing "I don't care!"

A woman's heart is trifled with,
Her hopes are ground to dust,
Her proud soul humbled with neglect,
Betrayed her sacred trust,
Yet, while to desperation stung,
With death and ruin there,
She'll crush the tears and cheat you with
A laughing "I don't care?"

"I don't care!" 'tis but a breath,
The words are seeming fair,
But many a heartache lies beneath
A careless "I don't care!"


A STAINED LILY.

Some lilies grew by a brook-side,
Tall and white, and cold,
And lifted up to the sunshine
Their great red hearts of gold.

And near to their bed grew mosses,
rank vines, and flowers small,
And loathsome weeds, and thistles,
And the sunlight warmed them all.

Anon, the proud white lilies
Were gathered one by one,
Each to crown a festal
Rarest under the sun.

One lily stooped to the brooklet,
Her face she knew was fair,
And the face of flowing water
Mirrored her image there.

A hand upraised in envy,
Or carelessness, or jest,
Flung from the turbid water,
Mud, on the lily's breast.

And all the proud, white lilies
Turned their faces away,
And nobody plucked that lily,
And day, and night, and day

She wept for her ruined beauty:
And the dew-drops, and the rain,
Touched with her tears, in pity
Fell on the muddy stain.

Still stood she in her grieving
Day, and night, and day;
Nor tears, nor dew, nor rain-drops,
Could fade the stain away.

Pining in desolation,
Shunned by each of her kind,
Sought she a bitter solace
In creatures of a coarser mind.

But the breath of the nettle stung her,
And the thistle's rude embrace
Burned her sensitive nature,
And scarred the fair, stained face.

Lower drooped the lily,
And died at the feet of the weeds;
And only the tender mosses
Ministered to her needs.

And still the tall while lilies
Stand as cold, and proud,
And still the weeds and thistles
Against the lilies crowd.

Alike the same warm sunbeams,
On weed and flower fall,
Alike by the same soil nourished,
And the great God made them all.


* * * * *


A VALENTINE.

I love thee for the soul that shines
Within thine eyes' soft beaming,
From out whose depths the prisoned fires
Of intellect are gleaming.

I love thee for the mind that soars
Beyond earth's narrow keeping,
That measures suns, and stars, and worlds,
Through boundless limits sweeping.

I love thee for the voice whose power
Can in my heart awaken
To passioned life each slumbering chord
The ruder tones have shaken.

Thou ne'er, perchance, mayst feel the chain
With which this love has bound thee,
Nor dream thee of the hand that flung
Its glittering links around thee.

And vainly mayst thou deem the task
Thy captive bounds to sever--
Who madly dates to love thee now
Will love thee on forever.


* * * * *


WHICH ONE.

Each was as fair as the other,
And both as my life were dear;
And the voices that lisped me mother,
Heaven's music in my ear.

One faded from life--and mother,
And died in the summer dawn;
And I turned away from the other
And wept for the child that was gone.

Then I lay in a weird sleep-vision,
Before me an earth dark scene,
And the land of the sweet Elysian,
And only a grave between.

One child soft called me mother
Out from the shining door,
And smile and beckoned; the other
Unconsciously played on the floor.

One's path, to my inward seeing,
Was light with a wondrous day,
And led to the heights of being,
And an angel showed the way.

The other lay where Marah's
Hot sands with snares are strewn--
Through many a darksome forest,
And the way was roughly hewn.

A faith to my soul was given--
The weird sleep-vision o'er--
And I turned from the child in heaven
To the child that played on the floor.


* * * * *


LIFE'S WAY.

Good-bye, sweetheart, he said, and clasped her hand,
And rained his kisses on her tear-wet face;
Then broke away, and in a foreign land.
For her dear sake, sought gold, that he might place

Love's jeweled crown upon his queen's fair brow,
And pour his hard-won treasures at her feet;
And swore, than Heaven, than life itself, his vow
To her he held more sacred and more sweet.

She waited as the woman only may
Whose eyes are blinded oft with unshed tears;
Lines on her forehead grew, and threads of gray;
The weary days crept into weary years.

"Oh stars, go down! Oh sun, be shrouded now!
My love comes not; he does not live," she said;
And brushed the curls he'd kissed back from her brow,
And pout on mourning for her dead.

And still as oft the day came round that he
Had left his warm good-bye upon her lips,
As oft she sought the head-land by sea,
And longing watched the far-off white-sailed ships.

To-day, the low sand-beach was over-strewn;
Torn sail, and broken spar and human form,
'Gulfed by the waves, and crushed, and then out-thrown--
A ship went down in yester-night's wild storm.

She walked among the debris, and the dead,
As some sweet mercy-sister on her round,
Scanning each up-turned face with nameless dread,
For aught of life; her tireless searching found

A babe--a waif with tawny tangled locks,
And great blue eyes with wonder brimming o'er;
Of all the human freight wrecked on the rocks,
The only living thing that washed ashore.

A pearl-gemmed golden case upon its breast
She oped, then stared, her eyes a-sudden wild,
A name, a pictured face told all the rest;
His name--his face--his child!


* * * * *


UNCLE SAM'S SOLILOQUY.

I'm a century old and more to-day--
A ripe old age for a modern man,--
Yet they who rocked my cradle, they say,
Predicted a thousand years my span;
They christened me at the fount of prayer,
And gave me a star-gemmed robe to wear.

My first free breath was battle-smoke
A prayerful nurses did not abhor
The sounds that first my ear awoke--
The clash and din and shout of war.
They pressed in my hand a crown of might
And pointed my way to the eagle's flight.

Cannon and sword were my playthings to bless,
(Dangerous toys for a babe to try,)
The stirring reveille my more caress,
The wild tattoo was my lullaby;
And well, methinks, as they years have run,
Have I wrought the work my sires begun.

An infant prodigy I, and ere
Expired a tenth of my granted day,
I wrested from lion-grasp the spear--
A nation's power I held in sway;
I broke the gives from freedom's graves,
And steam and lightning I bound my slaves.

I flung my starred robe on the breeze,
From burning tropic to arctic cold.
On distant isles, in distant seas,
A foot-hold gained with sword and gold.
Atlantic's slope and Pacific's strand
I bound together with an iron band.

But of late I've premature grown old;
There's something wrong with the clothes I wear;
There is something wrong with the helm I hold,
Else I hold it wrong,--there's wrong somewhere.
Disease too has thrown me his poisoned dart;
His workman are "striking" right at my heart.

My head is so strangely vision thrilled
With plans to evade the demon's stay,
But all the plots that my brain have filled
Only have served to augment his sway,
And on my feet, at the sunset's door,
Is spreading a troublesome grievous sore.

I'm growing ill I can plainly see,
And many prescribe my pain to ease,
But somehow each medicine proves to be
"A remedy worse than the disease."
Though strong as ever, should once my strength
Give way, I must fall a fearful length.

My