OLD LETTERS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 42, 17 October 1891, Page 494

OLD LETTERS.

Av, better bum them. What does it avail To treasure the dumb words so dear to us ’ Like dead leaves tossed before the autumn gale Will be each written page we cherished thus, When Time’s great wind has swept them all away— The smiles, loves, tears, and hatreds of to day. Living, we hoard our letters, holding them Sacred and safe, as almost sentient things; So strong the yearning tide of grief to stem, So true, when doubt creeps in, or treason stings ; Parting may smile, such golden bridge between ; Change cannot come where such stamped faith has been. Dying, we leave them to our children’s care, Our well-prized solace, records of the time When life lay spread before us, rich and fair, And love and hope spoke prophecies sublime ; Lore slowly gathered through laborious hours, Wit’s playful flashes, sweet poetic flowers. All these to us, to us—and for awhile, Our loved will guard the casket where they lie. Glancing them over with a tearful smile, Touching their yellowing foldings tenderly ; A little while—but Life and Time are strong, ■Our dearest cannot keep such vigils long. And by-and-bye the cold bright eyes of youth, Lighting on such old flotsam of the past, The shattered spars of trust, and hope, and truth, < in the blank shore of Time’s great ocean cast, Will read and judge, with naught of soft behoving, Dissecting, sneering, anything but loving. So, let us burn them all, the tottering words The guided baby fingers wrote us first, The school-boy scribble—lines the man affords To the old eyes that watched—old hands that must, The girl's sweet nonsense, confidence of friend, And these, our own, ours only, till the end. Heap them together, one last fervent kiss, Then let them turn, ere we do, into dust, Ashes to ashes. Well and wise it is, To meet the end that comes, as come it must; And leave no relics to grow grey and rotten, Waiting the certain doom of the forgotten

Exchange.