sk
So slight, when it is all I ask:

Scatter my ashes in the street
Where avenue and crossway meet.

I beg you of your charity,
No granite and cement for me,

To needlessly perpetuate
An unimportant name and date.

Others may wish to lay them down
On some fair hillside far from town,

Where slim white birches wave and gleam
Beside a shadowy woodland stream,

Or in luxurious beds of fern,
But I would have my dust return

To the one place it loved the best
In days when it was happiest.

To a Young Lady on Her Birthday

The marching years go by
And brush your garment's hem.
The bandits by and by
Will bid you go with them.

Trust not that caravan!
Old vagabonds are they;
They'll rob you if they can,
And make believe it's play.

Make the old robbers give
Of all the spoils they bear,--
Their truth, to help you live,--
Their joy, to keep you fair.

Ask not for gauds nor gold,
Nor fame that falsely rings;
The foolish world grows old
Caring for all these things.

Make all your sweet demands
For happiness alone,
And the years will fill your hands
With treasures rarely known.

The Gift

I said to Life, "How comes it,
With all this wealth in store,
Of beauty, joy, and knowledge,
Thy cry is still for more?

"Count all the years of striving
To make thy burden less,--
The things designed and fashioned
To gladden thy success!

"The treasures sought and gathered
Thy lightest whim to please,--
The loot of all the ages,
The spoil of all the seas!

"Is there no end of labor,
No limit to thy need?
Must man go bowed forever
In bondage to thy greed?"

With tears of pride and passion
She answered, "God above!
I only wait the asking,
To spend it all for love!"

The Cry of the Hillborn

I am homesick for the mountains--
My heroic mother hills--
And the longing that is on me
No solace ever stills.

I would climb to brooding summits
With their old untarnished dreams,
Cool my heart in forest shadows
To the lull of falling streams;

Hear the innocence of aspens
That babble in the breeze,
And the fragrant sudden showers
That patter on the trees.

I am lonely for my thrushes
In their hermitage withdrawn,
Toning the quiet transports
Of twilight and of dawn.

I need the pure, strong mornings,
When the soul of day is still,