To Critics

WHEN I was seventeen I heard

From each censorious tongue,

"I'd not do that if I were you;

You see you're rather young."

Now that I number forty years,

I'm quite as often told

Of this or that I shouldn't do

Because I'm quite too old.

O carping world! If there's an age

Where youth and manhood keep

An equal poise, alas! I must

Have passed it in my sleep.

Walter Learned

With A Spray of Apple Blossoms

THE promise of these fragrant flowers,

  The fruit that 'neath these blossoms lies

Once hung, they say, in Eden's bowers,

  And tempted Eve in Paradise.

O fairest daughter of Eve's blood,

  Lest her misprision thine should be,

I've nipped temptation in the bud

  And send this snowy spray to thee.

Walter Learned

The Last Reservation

SULLEN and dull, in the September day,

On the bank of the river,

They waited the boat that should bear them away

From their poor homes forever.

For progress strides on, and the order had gone

To these wards of the nation:

"Give us land and more room," was the cry, "and move on

To the next reservation."

With her babe, she looked back at her home 'neath the trees

From which they were driven,

Where the last camp-fire's smoke, borne out on the breeze,

Rose slowly toward heaven.

Behind her, fair fields, and the forest and glade,

The home of her nation;

Around her, the gleam of the bayonet and blade

Of civilization.

Clasping close to her bosom the small dusky form

With tender caressing,

She bent down, on the cheek of her babe soft and warm

A mother's kiss pressing.

A splash in the river--the column moves on

Close-guarded and narrow,

Noting as little as the two that are gone

As the fall of a sparrow.

Only an Indian! Wretched, obscure,

To refinement a stranger,

And a babe, that was born in a wigwam as poor

And rude as a manger.

Moved on--to make room for the growth in the West

Of a brave Christian nation,

Moved on--thank God, forever at rest

In the last reservation.

Walter Learned

On the Fly-Leaf of Manon Lescaut

TO you, whose temperate pulses flow

With measured beat, serene and slow,

The even tenor of whose way

Is undisturbed by passion's sway,

This tale of wayward love may seem

The record of a fevered dream.

And yet, we two have that within

To make us what our kind have been.

A lure more strong, a wish more faint,

Makes one a monster, one a saint;

And even love, by difference nice,

Becomes a virtue or a vice.

The briar, that o'er the garden wall

Trails its sweet blossoms till they fall

Across the dusty road, and then

Are trodden under foot of men,

Is sister to the decorous rose

Within the garden's well-kept close,

Whose pinioned branches may not roam

Out and beyond their latticed home.

There's many a life of sweet content

Whose virtue is environment.

They erred, they fell; and yet, 'tis true,

They hold the mirror up to you.

Walter Learned

In Explanation

HER lips were so near

That--what else could I do?

You'll be angry, I fear,

But her lips were so near--

Well, I can't make it clear,

Or explain it to you,

But--her lips were so near

That--what else could I do?

Walter Learned