Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

An Old Song

Two roadways lead from This land to That; and one is the road of Prayer;
And one is the road of Old Time Songs, and every note is a stair.

A shabby old man with a music machine on the sordid city street,--
But suddenly earth seemed Arcady, and life grew young and sweet
For the city street fled and the world was green and a little house stood by the sea;
And she came singing a martial air (she who was peace itself);
She brought back with her the old strange charm of mingled pathos and glee;
With her eyes of a child in a woman's face and her soul of a saint in an elf.

She had been gone for many a year, they tell us it is not far,--
That silent place where the dear ones go but it might as well be a star.
Yes it might as well be a distant star, as a beautiful Near-By-Land.
If we hear no voice, and see no face, and feel no touch of a hand.

But now she had come, for I saw her there, and she looked so blithe and young;
(Not white and still as I saw her last) and the rose that she wore was red;
And her voice soared up in a birdlike trill, at the end of the song she sung,
And she mimicked a soldier's warlike stride and tossed back her dear little head.

She had been gone for many a year, and never came back before;
But I think she dwells in a Near-By-Land since a song jarred open the door;
Yes I think it is surely a Near-By-Land, that place where our loved ones are
For the song would never have reached her ear had she been on a distant star.

Two roadways lead from This land to That; and one is the road of Prayer;
And one is the road of Old Time Songs, and every note is a stair.

1. The Birth of the Orchid
2. The Black Charger
3. At Set of Sun
4. The Call (All wantonly in hours of joy)
5. Be Not Attached

Rudyard Kipling An Old Song ("So long as 'neath the Kalka hills")

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