There's a magical isle up the river of Time, Where the softest of airs are playing; There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime, And a song as sweet as a vesper chime, And the Junes with the roses are staying.
And the name of that isle is the Long Ago, And we bury our treasures there; There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow-- There are heaps of dust--but we love them so!-- There are trinkets and tresses of hair;
There are fragments of song that nobody sings, And a part of an infant's prayer, There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings; There are broken vows and pieces of rings, And the garments that she used to wear.
There are hands that are waved, when the fairy shore By the mirage is lifted in air; And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar, Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the river is fair.
Oh, remembered for aye be the blessed Isle, All the day of our life till night-- When the evening comes with its beautiful smile. And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile, May that "Greenwood" of Soul be in sight!
NOTE: The last line of this poem needs explanation. "Greenwood" is the name of a cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y. "Greenwood of Soul" means the soul's resting place, or heaven.
In an attic bare and cheerless, Jim the newsboy dying lay On a rough but clean straw pallet, at the fading of the day; Scant the furniture about him but bright flowers were in the room, Crimson phloxes, waxen lilies, roses laden with perfume. On a table by the bedside open at a well-worn page, Where the mother had been reading lay a Bible stained by age, Now he could not hear the verses; he was flighty, and she wept With her arms around her youngest, who close to her side had crept.
Blacking boots and selling papers, in all weathers day by day, Brought upon poor Jim consumption, which was eating life away, And this cry came with his anguish for each breath a struggle cost, "'Ere's the morning _Sun_ and _'Erald_--latest news of steamship lost. Papers, mister? Morning papers?" Then the cry fell to a moan, Which was changed a moment later to another frenzied tone: "Black yer boots, sir? Just a nickel! Shine 'em like an evening star. It grows late, Jack! Night is coming. Evening papers, here they are!"