Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Quatrains

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)

BLACK Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise

And shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes;

But when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears,

’Tis ten to one you find the girl in tears.

TWO things there are with Memory will abide—

Whatever else befall—while life flows by:

That soft cold hand-touch at the altar side;

The thrill that shook you at your child’s first cry.