TO MINNIE

Ah, far enough, my dear,
Far, far enough from here—
Yet you have farther gone!
“Can I get there by candlelight 2’
So goes the old refrain.
I do not know—perchance you might—
But only, children, hear it right,
Ah, never to return again !
The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,
Shall break on hill and plain,
And put all stars and candles out,
Ere we be young again.
To you in distant India, these
I send across the seas,
Nor count it far across.
For which of us forgets
The Indian cabinets,
The bones of antelope, the wings of albatross,
The pied and painted birds and beans,
The junks and bangles, beads and screens,
The gods and sacred bells,
And the loud-humming, twisted shells?
The level of the parlour floor
Was honest, homely, Scottish shore ;
But when we climbed upon a chair,
Behold the gorgeous East was there !
Be this a fable; and behold
Me in the parlour as of old,
And Minnie just above me set
In the quaint Indian cabinet !
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