Poems (Odom)/Experience
For works with similar titles, see Experience.
EXPERIENCE.
Bring none of your sorrowful tales to me, Nor talk of your falling tears;My heart is singing a song of glee In the flush of my girlish years.
A funeral train goes by, you say, With its sable plumes all curled;Do close the door, as it comes this way: I would not look out for the world.
I have seen but once a cold, dead face, With never a pulse nor breath—The graveyard must be a horrible place, With nothing but bones and death.
Pray turn that beggar outside of the gate, And teach him to know his place,It makes me shiver to think of the great, Deep scar on his pallid face.
I dream bad dreams and loose my sleep Whenever these things I meet,I think that a law should be made to keep Such objects out of the street.
You say that Nellie sat up last night Alone with a dying child!How could she do it? The very sight Of the sick would drive me wild.
The mother was tired and quite undone? I could not help that, I am sure;I know I never could be the one To drudge in the huts of the poor.
I live in the golden gleam of light; My life is a field of flowers,I shrink from the gloom and dark of night In dread of its dismal hours.
Then bring no tale of your woe to me, Nor talk of your falling tears;My heart is singing a song of glee, So glad are my girlish years.
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My last child died in my arms to-night, Alone in the bitter dark,For the city a thousand jets of light, For me, not a single spark.
I press my lips to the cold, dead brow I never again shall see,O ghastly friend! you are welcome now, There is nothing but death for me.