If I might see his face to-day!— He is so happy now!—To hear His laugh is like a roundelay— So ringing-sweet and clear! His step—I heard it long before He bounded through the open door To tell his marriage.—Ah! so kind— So good he is!—And I—so blind! But thus he always came to me— Me, first of all, he used to bring His sorrow to—his ecstasy— His hopes and everything; And if I joyed with him or wept, It was not long _the music_ slept,— And if he sung, or if I played— Or both,—we were the braver made. I grew to know and understand His every word at every call,— The gate-latch hinted, and his hand In mine confessed it all: He need not speak one word to me— He need not sigh—I need not see,— But just the one touch of his palm, And I would answer—song or psalm. He wanted recognition—name— He hungered so for higher things,— The altitudes of power and fame, And all that fortune brings: Till, with his great heart fevered thus, And aching as impetuous, I almost wished sometimes that _he_ Were blind and patient made, like me. But he has won!—I knew he would.— Once in the mighty Eastern mart, I knew his music only could Be sung in every heart! And when he proudly sent me this From out the great metropolis, I bent above the graven score And, weeping, kissed it o’er and o’er.— And yet not blither sing the birds Than this glad melody,—the tune As sweetly wedded with the words As flowers with middle-June; Had he not _told_ me, I had known It was composed of love alone— His love for _her_.—And she can see His happy face eternally!— While _I_—O God, forgive, I pray!— Forgive me that I did so long To look upon his face to-day!— I know the wish was wrong.— Yea, I am thankful that my sight Is shielded safe from such delight:— I can pray better, with this blur Of blindness—both for him and her. WE DEFER THINGS We say and we say and we say, We promise, engage and declare, Till a year from to-morrow is yesterday, And yesterday is—Where? THE MUSKINGUM VALLEY The Muskingum Valley!—How longin’ the gaze A feller throws back on its long summer days, When the smiles of its blossoms and _my_ smiles wuz one- And-the-same, from the rise to the set o’ the sun: Wher’ the hills sloped as soft as the dawn down to noon, And the river run by like an old fiddle-tune, And the hours glided past as the bubbles ’ud glide, All so loaferin’-like, ’long the path o’ the tide. In the Muskingum Valley—it ’peared-like the skies Looked lovin’ on me as my own mother’s eyes, While the laughin’-sad song of the stream seemed to be Like a lullaby angels was wastin’ on me— Tel, swimmin’ the air, like the gossamer’s thread, ’Twixt the blue underneath and the blue overhead, My thoughts went astray in that so-to-speak realm Wher’ Sleep bared her breast as a piller fer them.