BACKWARD, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, Make me a child again just for to-night! Mother, come back from the echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yore; Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care, Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair; Over my slumbers your loving watch keep; Rock me to sleep, mother, -rock me to sleep! Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! I am so weary of toil and of tears, I have grown weary of dust and decay, - Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue, Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you! Many a summer the grass has grown green, Blossomed and faded, our faces between: Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain, - MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND 329 DOWN THE BAYOU THE Cypress swamp around me wraps its spell, With hushing sounds in moss-hung branches there, Like congregations rustling down to prayer, The scarlet lichen writes her rubrics well. The cypress-knees take on them marvellous shapes Of pygmy nuns, gnomes, goblins, witches, fays, The vigorous vine the withered gum-tree drapes, Across the oozy ground the rabbit plays, The moccasin to jungle depths escapes, And through the gloom the wild deer shyly gaze. RESERVE THE sea tells something, but it tells not all That rests within its bosom broad and deep; The psalming winds that o'er the ocean sweep From compass point to compass point may call, Nor half their music unto earth let fall; Of life, which men can touch not nor lay bare: Thus great in what he gives the world to grasp, Is greater still in that which he withholds. |