To My Sister

These books you find three weeks behind
Your honored anniversary
Make me, I fear, to here appear
Mayhap a trifle cursory.--
Yet while the Muse must thus refuse
The chords that fall caressfully,
She seems to stir the publisher
And dealer quite successfully.

As to our birthdays--let 'em run
Until they whir and whiz!
Read Robert Louis Stevenson,
And hum these lines of his:--
"The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,
Shall break on hill and plain
And put all stars and candles out
Ere we be young again."