202 ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL. ABOU BEN ADHEM AND THE ANGEL. ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!) Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." "And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. Leigh Hunt. THE OLD MAN DREAMS. 203 THE OLD MAN DREAMS. OH, for one hour of youthful joy! Off with the wrinkled spoils of age! One moment let my life-blood stream -My listening angel heard the prayer, "If I but touch thy silvered hair, Thy hasty wish hath sped. But is there nothing in thy track While the swift seasons hurry back -Ah, truest soul of womankind! I'll take—my—precious wife! 204 THE OLD MAN DREAMS. -The angel took a sapphire pen -"And is there nothing yet unsaid Why, yes; for memory would recall I could not bear to leave them all; The smiling angel dropped his pen,- The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!" And so I laughed:—my laughter woke The household with its noise, And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys. Oliver Wendell Holmes. SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOURGLASS. 205 SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOURGLASS. A HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime Within this glass becomes the spy of Time, How many weary centuries has it been How many strange vicissitudes has seen, Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith Or anchorites beneath Engaddi's palms And singing slow their old Armenian psalms 206 SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOURGLASS. Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate, These have passed over it, or may have passed! And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand;- Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, And borne aloft by the sustaining blast, Dilates into a column high and vast, And onward, and across the setting sun, The column and its broader shadow run, The vision vanishes! These walls again Shut out the hot immeasurable plain; The half-hour's sand is run! H. W. Longfellow. |