From the Rock Island Argus, January 5, 1914. By Henry Howland.
HE.
We two may never meet again;
The world is wide, seas may divide us;
Why should we squander or disdain
This chance with which Fate has supplied us?
Why should we dream of future bliss,
A present gladness blindly losing?
Tomorrow you may crave the kiss
That you are stubbornly refusing.
Tomorrow, when it is too late,
When leagues between us may be lying,
You may bemoan your lonely fate
And waste the hours in futile sighing;
Perhaps within a mile or two
The ways we go may be diverging;
Why scorn the kiss I offer you?
Tomorrow I may not be urging.
SHE.
We two may never meet, I know,
And splashing seas may lie between us;
Hereafter there may never grow
A potted palm or vine to screen us;
I may, as you have said, give way
To useless sighing and to sorrow,
And mourn the chance I have today,
When I sit down to think, tomorrow.
But, even if our ways shall part
And if our hopes must bloom asunder,
Shall happiness avoid my heart,
And no fond lips press mine, I wonder?
Nay, though through No Man’s Land I fare,
I’ll meet some brave one—never doubt it—
Who will gladly embrace me there,
Without first lecturing about it.