WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Hawke's Bay Times, Issue 1615, 29 September 1874, Page 373

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

W. C. H. There’s a tall lean spectre draped in white, With bony visage ami hollow eyes, That hovers around our couch by night, And troubles our sleep with its ghostly sighs; And when at the dawn it disappears— Far spectres iu daylight may not be seen— Its woeful wailing still haunts our ears, For this is the ghost of what might have been. It beckons and points with its taper hand, As a bailiff might sue for an unpaid debt; And it drags from the shade of the unseen land Some deeds of the past we would fain forget. Some friend wc have slighted, some word escaped, Bespeaking an anger wc did not mean, That the whole of our after life has shaped, And left us to sigh o’er what might have been. Is there no vow we have failed to keep 1 No evil path we refused to shun 1 Is there no heart we have caused to weep, Or some good work we have left undone 1 Is not childhood’s innocence far from us now, With a broad deep gulf of sin between ? And can wc sit with unclouded brow And balance what is with what might have been? In every heart there’s a tender spot, With some sweet hope lying buried there,— A faded dream that seems half forgot, Like the secret drawer with its lock of hair. The summers they come, and the summers they go, But the grave of that hope shall aye be green, And the hearts that cherish it only know The grief lying under what might have been. But a morbid fancy forgetting deeds And ever sighing, new grief begets, And the loveliest lives will run to weeds If left to brood over vain regrets. Then let us eschew the heart’s decay, And escape from this spectre tall and lean, Work while it is day that each one may Fulfil in the end what might have been. * —The Quiver,