Sweeter couch hath who than I?
Quoth the brilliant Butterfly.
Life is but a summer day,
Gliding languidly away;
Winter comes, alas! too soon,--
Would it were forever June!
Yet though brief my flight may be,
Fun and frolic still for me!
When the summer leaves and flowers,
Now so beautiful and gay,
In the cold autumnal showers,
Droop and fade, and pine away,
Who would not prefer to die?
What were life to _such as I_?
Quoth the flaunting Butterfly.
[Footnote 101: Born in North Carolina; in the intervals of his law
practice has published a volume of poems.]
* * * * *
=_Thomas Hailey Aldrich.[102] 1836-._=
From his "Poems."
=_427._= THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS.
Kind was my friend who, in the Eastern land,
Remembered me with such a gracious hand,
And sent this Moorish Crescent which has been
Worn on the tawny bosom of a queen.
No more it sinks and rises in unrest
To the soft music of her heathen breast;
No barbarous chief shall bow before it more,
No turbaned slave shall envy and adore!
I place beside this relic of the Sun
A cross of Cedar brought from Lebanon,
Once 'borne, perchance, by some pale monk who trod
The desert to Jerusalem--and his God!
Here do they lie, two symbols of two creeds,
Each meaning something to our human needs,
Both stained with blood, and sacred made by faith,
By tears, and prayers, and martyrdom, and death.
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