The days are pictures, and they run Their hastening course of smiles and tears. As shadows flit ’twixt sun and sun, So pass the ever-dying years. When the Curtain Falls (1918) When the end is reached, and the curtain falls, And the echoes die from the voiceless walls, This is the thing that alone will tell: The actor’s part--has he played it well? A few swift scenes and the course is run; A few brief facts and the play is done. May it be well when the far voice calls, And the lights go out, and the curtain falls. The World’s Drama (1918) The world’s a screen. Across it flit the shadows Of all the multitudes that come and go. They move in dusty lanes, o’er sunny meadows, And where the hand of toil moves to and fro. There is the mourner and the long procession; There is the maid with joy of which to sing; There is the warrior, with his blood-possession; There is the shade of some forgotten king. Soon is each gone. Soon yonder in the distance Each comes amid the mists to disappear, Where dying light falls on his face or glistens For one brief moment on his helm or spear. Yet as each goes another is approaching. A multitude is shadowed on ahead; So moves the line, forevermore encroaching Upon the borders of the silent dead. Thus goes the drama, each his fond part playing, For what he plays to him is all in all-- Striving, pursuing, loving, toiling, praying, Until the darkness overshadows all. Jim (1919) A chicken-hearted boy was Jim, A lad with a gentle face and eye. The boys all joined in a laugh at him Whenever he chanced to be passing by. He wouldn’t set foot on a helpless thing. For a crawling worm he’d turn aside. He was always making a splint or sling For some wounded creature that else had died. Well, Jim grew up, and the war came on. Justice and right in the dust lay low. One day they noticed that Jim was gone, And wondered if he could face the foe. It was said that no braver soldier fought In all the marshaled ranks than Jim; From many battles he finally brought The name of a hero home with him. We looked to see a steely eye And a hardened face from his soldier ways, But the same old lad came marching by With the gentle eyes of his boyhood days. He had heard the voices of battle ring; He had faced the peril from death’s grim shore; But to-day he treads on no helpless thing, Though they call him chicken-heart no more.