O golden day, -- a golden crown For the kingly heads that bowed not down To win a smile or 'scape a frown, Except the smile and frown of Heaven! Dear heads, still dark with raven hair; Dear hearts, still white in spite of care; Dear eyes, still black and bright and fair As any eyes to mortals given! Old parents of a restless race, You miss full many a bonny face That would have smiled a filial grace Around your Golden Wedding wine. But God is good and God is great. His will be done, if soon or late. Your dead stand happy in yon Gate And call you blessed while they shine. So, drop the tear and dry the eyes. Your rainbow glitters in the skies. Here's golden wine: young, old, arise: With cups as full as our souls, we say: "Two Hearts, that wrought with smiles through tears This rainbow span of fifty years, Behold how true, true love appears True gold for your Golden Wedding day!" ____ Macon, Georgia, September, 1868. Strange Jokes. Well: Death is a huge omnivorous Toad Grim squatting on a twilight road. He catcheth all that Circumstance Hath tossed to him. He curseth all who upward glance As lost to him. Once in a whimsey mood he sat And talked of life, in proverbs pat, To Eve in Eden, -- "Death, on Life" -- As if he knew! And so he toadied Adam's wife There, in the dew. O dainty dew, O morning dew That gleamed in the world's first dawn, did you And the sweet grass and manful oaks Give lair and rest To him who toadwise sits and croaks His death-behest? Who fears the hungry Toad? Not I! He but unfetters me to fly. The German still, when one is dead, Cries out "Der Tod!" But, pilgrims, Christ will walk ahead And clear the road. ____ Macon, Georgia, July, 1867. Nirvana. Through seas of dreams and seas of phantasies, Through seas of solitudes and vacancies, And through my Self, the deepest of the seas, I strive to thee, Nirvana. Oh long ago the billow-flow of sense, Aroused by passion's windy vehemence, Upbore me out of depths to heights intense, But not to thee, Nirvana. By waves swept on, I learned to ride the waves. I served my masters till I made them slaves. I baffled Death by hiding in his graves, His watery graves, Nirvana. And once I clomb a mountain's stony crown And stood, and smiled no smile and frowned no frown, Nor ate, nor drank, nor slept, nor faltered down, Five days and nights, Nirvana. Sunrise and noon and sunset and strange night And shadow of large clouds and faint starlight And lonesome Terror stalking round the height, I minded not, Nirvana. The silence ground my soul keen like a spear. My bare thought, whetted as a sword, cut sheer Through time and life and flesh and death, to clear My way unto Nirvana. I slew gross bodies of old ethnic hates That stirred long race-wars betwixt States and States. I stood and scorned these foolish dead debates, Calmly, calmly, Nirvana.