Nocturne

Up to her chamber window
A slight wire trellis goes,
And up this Romeo's ladder
Clambers a bold white rose.

I lounge in the ilex shadows,
I see the lady lean,
Unclasping her silken girdle,
The curtain's folds between.

She smiles on her white-rose lover,

She reaches out her hand

And helps him in at the window

I see it where I stand!

To her scarlet lip she holds him,
And kisses him many a time—
Ah, me! it was he that won her
Because he dared to climb!

Over the River

Over the river they beckon to me,

Loved ones who 've cross'd to the farther side; The gleam of their snowy robes I see

But their voices are drown'd in the rushing tide. There's one with ringlets of sunny gold,

And eyes, the reflection of heaven's own blue; He crossed in the twilight, gray and cold,

And the pale mist hid him from mortal view.
We saw not the angels who met him there;
The gates of the city we could not see;
Over the river, over the river,

My brother stands waiting to welcome me.

Over the river, the boatman pale

Carried another, the household pet:

Her brown curls waved in the gentle gale-
Darling Minnie! I see her yet.

She cross'd on her bosom her dimpled hands,
And fearlessly enter'd the phantom bark;
We watch'd it glide from the silver sands,
And all our sunshine grew strangely dark.
We know she is safe on the farther side,
Where all the ransom'd and angels be;
Over the river, the mystic river,

My childhood's idol is waiting for me.

For none return from those quiet shores,
Who cross with the boatman cold and pale;
We hear the dip of the golden oars,

And catch a gleam of the snowy sail,—

And lo! they have pass'd from our yearning heart; They cross the stream, and are gone for aye; We may not sunder the veil apart,

That hides from our vision the gates of day. We only know that their barks no more

May sail with us o'er life's stormy sea; Yet somewhere, I know, on the unseen shore, They watch, and beckon, and wait for me.

And I sit and think, when the sunset's gold
Is flushing river, and hill, and shore,
I shall one day stand by the water cold,

And list for the sound of the boatman's oar;
I shall watch for a gleam of the flapping sail;
I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand;
I shall pass from sight, with the boatman pale,
To the better shore of the spirit land;

I shall know the loved who have gone before,-
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be,
When over the river, the peaceful river,
The Angel of Death shall carry me.

Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Because he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he 's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.

Whar have you been for the last three year
That you have n't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?

He were n't no saint, them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,-
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,—
I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had,—

To treat his engine well;

Never be passed on the river;

To mind the pilot's bell;

And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,

A thousand times he swore

He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,-

The Movastar was a better boat,

But the Belle she would n't be passed.
And so she come tearin' along that night-
The oldest craft on the line-

With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she clared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,

And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that willer-bank on the right.

There was runnin' and cussin', but Jim yelled out,

Over all the infernal roar,

"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank

Till the last galoot's ashore."

Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard,

And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he would keep his word.
And, sure's you 're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,-
And Bludso's ghost went up alone

In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.