I cannot send you what you've sent to me; And so I wish you'll never thank me more For those poor gifts I have sent from year to year. I send another, and hope that you can use it To buy yourself those comforts which you need This Christmas-time. How strange it is to wake And find that half a century has gone by, With all our endless youth. They talk to me Of my discoveries, prate of undying fame Too late to help me. Anything I achieved Was done through work and patience; and the men Who sought quick roads to glory for themselves Were capable of neither. So I won Their hatred, and it often hampered me, Because it vexed my mind. This world of ours Would give me all, now I have ceased to want it; For I sit here, alone, a sad old man, Sipping his orange-water, nodding to sleep, Not caring any more for aught they say, Not caring any more for praise or blame; But dreaming-things we dreamed of, long ago, In childhood. You and I had laughed away That boy and girl affair. We were too poor For anything but laughter. I am old; And you, twice wedded and twice widowed, still Retain, through all your nearer joys and griefs, The old affection. Vaguely our blind old hands Grope for each other in this growing dark And deepening loneliness,--to say "good-bye." Would that my words could tell you all my heart; But even my words grow old. Perhaps these lines, Written not long ago, may tell you more. I have no skill in verse, despite the praise Your kindness gave me, once; but since I wrote Thinking of you, among the woods of home, My heart was in them. Let them turn to yours: _Give me, for friends, my own true folk Who kept the very word they spoke; Whose quiet prayers, from day to day, Have brought the heavens about my way. Not those whose intellectual pride Would quench the only lights that guide; Confuse the lines 'twixt good and ill Then throne their own capricious will; Not those whose eyes in mockery scan The simpler hopes and dreams of man; Not those keen wits, so quick to hurt, So swift to trip you in the dirt. Not those who'd pluck your mystery out, Yet never saw your last redoubt; Whose cleverness would kill the song Dead at your heart, then prove you wrong. Give me those eyes I used to know Where thoughts like angels come and go; --Not glittering eyes, nor dimmed by books, But eyes through which the deep soul looks. Give me the quiet hands and face That never strove for fame and place; The soul whose love, so many a day Has brought the heavens about my way._ VII