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

Too sensitive the specter to defy,
Arm, Hamlet-like, against a sea of woes,
And test the truth, that "it is life to die."


* * * * *


O, SPEAK IT NOT.

O, speak not hastily the word
Thine ear from idle tongues has heard.
If false the tale thou couldst recall,
How hard, and cruel must it fall?
If true, why, helping it along
Will never, never right the wrong.
O, speak it not, not speak the word
That wounds, though but in jest 'tis heard;
Keep back the thrust, the look askance,
The petty doubt, the sneering glance;
Keep back the taunts and jeers,
Life has enough of breaking hearts,
Of pointed barbs and venomed darts--
Enough of pain and tears.


A SHATTERED IDOL.

O blame me not for the cruel words
In a moment of madness said;
The shadow that fell upon my life
Is cold as the shrouded dead.
Deem not I am hard and heartless;
My tears are as warm as thine;
'Twas clay that I crowned and worshipped,
And wept o'er its crumbled shrine.

To me, my passionate, deathless soul,
Was less than his finger-tips;
He turned away fro the gold of my love
For the dross on a wanton's lips.
My faith in his truth is broken--
Even truth itself is a lie.
I have cursed him!--but I love him,
And I'll love him till I die.


POOR LITTLE JOE.

A ring on the door bell,
Some one at the door,
Mute asking admittance
Where never before
A stranger in midnight,
In silence and stealth,
Sought access to gain
In a mansion of wealth.
Into the gaslight
A package is borne;
Quickly from round it
The wrappings are torn.
What is it? a baby!
What seek you to-night,
So rosy and smiling,
Nor in fear, nor in fright?

Ah! little intruder,
What is it you wear
So close to your breast?
Sure but hand in despair
Could have written the message
Unconscious you bear,
And "loved" and "God blessed" you
While leaving you there.
Let's see the story
'Tis telling for you;
How brief and pathetic;
But can it be true?
A mother heart brokenly
Praying in grief
From hand of a stranger
Her baby's relief.
"He's helpless and homeless,
But stainless as snow;
O, take him and keep him--
My poor little Joe."

That's all there is of it,
If false or if true;
Yet long enough seems it,
And sad enough, too.
No love-welcomed greeted
The sweet baby face,
In the life that gave his life
There was not a place.
No place for the baby,
There's none for him here,
No heart that may give him
A smile or a tear.
Off to the refuge,
For such, he must go,
He's only a foundling--
Poor little Joe.

Deserted, forsaken,
Thrust out in the strife,
Adrift on the pitiless
Ocean of life.
What will become of him,
Who may decide
If good or if evil
His life shall betide.
No tender caresses
Ever to know,
Nor guidance, nor blessing--
Poor little Joe.


* * * * *


FATE.

Ruth was a laughing-eyed prattler,
Thoughtless, and happy, and free;
She planted a seed in the garden,
And said: "It will grow to a tree--
A beautiful blossoming tree."

The birds and the squirrels played round it,
As careless and merry was she,
But not tree ever grew from her planting--
No beautiful blossoming tree.

Ruth was a winsome-faced maiden,
Happy, and hopeful, and free;
She planted a seed in the garden,
And smilingly waited to see--
A beautiful blossoming tree.

She covered the ground up with flowers,
The butterfly came, and the bee,
But no tree ever grew from her planting--
No beautiful blossoming tree.

Ruth was a pale saddened woman,
Thoughtful, with tremblings and fears,
She planted a seed in the garden,
And watered the place with her tears--
And watched it with tremblings and fears.

The winds and the rains beat upon it,
The lightnings flashed o'er it in glee;
But she sleeps 'neath the tree of her planting--
A beautiful blossoming tree.


THE GHOSTS IN THE HEART.

They came in the hush of the midnight,
In the glare of the noonday start
Out from the graves we made them--
The graves we made in the heart.

There is love with its fickle fancies;
Its grave was so wide and deep,
And we heaped the mound with oblivion,
But the soul of love could not sleep.

And hate! ah, we buried it deeper
Than all the rest of the train;
But one word through memory flashing,
And its ghost comes back again.

There are phantoms of sunshiny hours
That fled when the summer time fled,
And specters that mock while they haunt us,
Long buried, but never dead.

And ever and ever an hour
Will come that the heart-wraiths control,
Till down from Eternity's tower
A banshee shall ring for the soul.


ONLY A TRAMP.

Only a tramp by the roadside dead,
Only a tramp--who cares?
His feet are bare, his dull eyes stare,
And the wind plays freaks with his unkempt hair.
The sun rose up and the sun went down,
But nobody missed him from the town
Where he begged for bread 'till the day he was dead.
He's only a tramp--who cares?
Only a tramp, a nuisance gone.
One more tramp less--who cares?

Ghastly and gray, in the lane all day,
A soiled, dead heap of human clay.
Would the wasted crumbs in the rich man's hall,
Where the gas-lights gleam and the curtains fall,
Have given him a longer lease of breath--
Have saved the wretch from starving to death?
He's only a tramp--who cares?

Only a tramp! was he ever more
Than a beggar tramp? Who cares?
Was the hard-lined face ever dimpled and sweet?
Has a mother kissed those rough brown feet,
And thought their tramping a sweeter strain
Than ever will waken his ear again?
Does somebody kneel 'way over the sea,
Praying "Father, bring back my boy to me?"
Does somebody watch and weep and pray
For the tramp who lies dead in the lane to-day?
He's only a tramp--who cares?


* * * * *


PUT FLOWERS ON MY GRAVE.

When dead, no imposing funeral rite,
Nor line of praise I crave;
But drop your tears upon my face--
Put flowers on my grave.

Close not in narrow wall the place
In which my heart finds rest,
Nor mark with tow'ring monument
The sod above my breast.

Nor carve on gleaming, marble slab
A burning thought or deed,
Or word of love, or praise, or blame,
For stranger eyes to read.

But deep, deep in your heart of hearts,
A tender mem'ry save;
Upon my dead face drop your tears--
Put flowers on my grave.


OLD AUNT LUCY.

Why into that darkened chamber
Walk you with such noiseless tread?
No slumbering one will awaken--
The sheeted form is dead.

Why gaze on the rigid features,
So white in death's embrace,
With such look of awe and pity?
'Tis only the same old face.

Why touch you now so tender
The hands that silent lay?
They're only the sunburned fingers
That toiled for you night and day.

Why now, with your tear-dimmed vision,
So softly do you press
Upon the wrinkled forehead
Your lips in sad caress?

How much of care had lighted
That lingering, loving kiss,
Had you in life but gave it--
You never thought of this.

No loving hand e'er brightened
Her life with tender care,
No mother's baby-kisses
Were ever hers to share.

Only for others caring,
The long, long years have fled;
Now, only, they say,--the neighbors--
"Poor old Aunt Lucy's dead."

And they whisper a girl's ambition,
A name in the world to make;
'Way back in her vanished youth-time,
Gave up for a duty's sake.

But whatever had been the story
Of love, or grief, or woe,
It died with the heart, and no one
Will ever care or know.

The hands were hard and toil-stained,
And sallow the cheeks and chin,
But whiter not the snow-wreath
Than the soul that dwelt within.

And methinks a crown resplendent--
Just over the waveless sea--
With gems of self-denial,
Awaits for such as she.


UNSPOKEN WORDS.

Unspoken words may thrill the heart,
Their meaning be more deeply felt
Than all the glowing oratory
Poured at the shrine where reason knelt.
The fairest pictures art conceives,
The noblest sentiments of mind,
The loveliest, purest gems of thought
Are those which never are defined.

The hand that paints the rainbow dyes
Ne'er leaves a trace its skill to show--
The art that gilds the sunset skies
And tints the flower, we may not know.
Nor may we know the wizard power
Which o'er our being wields control,
Nor how, when silence seals the lips,
Heart speaks to heart and soul to soul.

We do not know from whence the life
Imbued in crystal drop of rain,
Nor why, when torn and trampled on,
The rose's fragrance will remain.
Nor know we why the tender tone
Will linger when love's dream is fled,
Now why the smile we loved will live,
Although the face it wreathed will be dead.

Some strangely fascinating spell
Steals o'er the heart in ethic's hour;
We know not what, nor how, nor why,
Still must we own we feel its power--
A power that wakens slumbering dreams,
Intangible emotion swells,
That penetrates the soul's deep fount,
And greets the tide that from