Pine Bluff Daily Graphic

The Old Autograph Album

The links of Memory's clinging chain
Among the relics of the past.

That, with its meshes, binds me fast
To days that cannot come again.

There is no prize more precious than
This booklet; thoughtfully I scan
Its yellow pages, scribbled o'er
By many whom I knew of yore.

Here a refrain expressing love
Beneath the picture of a dove,
And there a half-sarcastic quip,
All traced in childish penmanship.

"If you love me as I love you
No knife can cut our love in two."

Neath that trite sentiment I see
A name once passing dear to me.

Across the past my memory flies-
I see a pair of laughing eyes.

I press a little hand that lay
Within my own that summer day.

"No knife can cut our love in two."

Still, it was but an earthly strand,
And what a knife could ne'er do
Was, as a higher power planned,
Accomplished by the reaper's hand.

O, treasured names! O memory!
What were existence without thee?

For art thou not the magic key
With which we penetrate the seal
That locks away the musty past,
And, in our leisure moments, steal
Great solace from that storeroom vast?

Bereft of thee, how man would grope
Into the future's unknown scope,
As up some storm swept rocky slope,
The shipwrecked mariner doth crawl,
Before him, dread uncertainty,
Behind, the cruel, yawning sea-
And darkness hanging over all.

-William F. Kirk.