I spread a scanty board too late; The old-time guests for whom I wait Come few and slow, methinks, to-day. Ah! who could hear my messages Across the dim unsounded seas On which so many have sailed away! Come, then, old friends, who linger yet, And let us meet, as we have met, Once more beneath this low sunshine; And grateful for the good we 've known, The riddles solved, the ills outgrown, Shake bands upon the border line. The favor, asked too oft before, From your indulgent ears, once more I crave, and, if belated lays To slower, feebler measures move, The silent, sympathy of love To me is dearer now than praise. And ye, O younger friends, for whom My hearth and heart keep open room, Come smiling through the shadows long, Be with me while the sun goes down, And with your cheerful voices drown The minor of my even-song. For, equal through the day and night, The wise Eternal oversight And love and power and righteous will Remain: the law of destiny The best for each and all must be, And life its promise shall fulfil. 1881. AN AUTOGRAPH. I write my name as one, On sands by waves o'errun Or winter's frosted pane, Traces a record vain. Oblivion's blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass. Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence that shall last. When I and all who know And love me vanish so, What harm to them or me Will the lost memory be? If any words of mine, Through right of life divine, Remain, what matters it Whose hand the message writ? Why should the "crowner's quest" Sit on my worst or best? Why should the showman claim The poor ghost of my name? Yet, as when dies a sound Its spectre lingers round, Haply my spent life will Leave some faint echo still. A whisper giving breath Of praise or blame to death, Soothing or saddening such As loved the living much. Therefore with yearnings vain And fond I still would fain A kindly judgment seek, A tender thought bespeak. And, while my words are read, Let this at least be said "Whate'er his life's defeatures, He loved his fellow-creatures. "If, of the Law's stone table, To hold he scarce was able The first great precept fast, He kept for man the last. "Through mortal lapse and dulness What lacks the Eternal Fulness, If still our weakness can Love Him in loving man? "Age brought him no despairing Of the world's future faring; In human nature still He found more good than ill.