AND THEY ARE DUMB.

I have been across the bridges of the years.

Wet with tears

Were the ties on which I trod, going back

Down the track

To the valley where I left,‘ neath skies of Truth,

My lost youth.

As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all —

Let them fall;

All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,

My white hair,

I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack,

By the track.

As I neared the happy valley with light feet,

My heart beat

To the rhythm of a song I used to know

Long ago,

And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain

Down a mountain.

On the border of that valley I found you,

Tried and true;

And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land

Hand in hand.

And my pulses beat with rapture in the blisses

Of your kisses.

And we met there, in those green and verdant places,

Smiling faces,

And sweet laughter echoed upward from the dells

Like gold bells.

And the world was spilling over with the glory

Of Youth's story.

It was but a dreamer's journey of the brain;

And again

I have left the happy valley far behind;

And I find

Time stands waiting with his burdens in a pack

For my back.

As he speeds me, like a rough, well-meaning friend,

To the end,

Will I find again the lost ones loved so well?

Who can tell!

But the dead know what the life will be to come —

And they are dumb!