THE KISS THAT WAS NEVER GIVEN.
It was a sorrowful morning,
And bitter words were said;
From the face of wife and husband
The sunshine of love had fled.
Their hearts were hot with anger,
As the husband went his way
With no kiss, and no kind word spoken
To think about all that day. And the heart of his wife was heavy,
Lonesome and sad through the day,
“I was wrong,” she said over and over,
As anger died slowly away.
“Had I spoken one kind word to him—
Had I given a smile for a frown—
It would all have been right between us,
Had I kept the hard words down. “When he comes from his work at evening
I will meet him with a kiss,
And say, ‘I was wrong—forgive me
For all that has gone amiss,
For all the pain I have given,
Forgive me this time, I pray,
And never again, God willing,
Shall we part as we did to-day.’” That sad day neared its ending,
The sun went down to rest,
And day’s departing glories
Crimsoned the distant west.
The wife looked out and listened
For that step by the garden gate,
And wondered, over and over,
Why her husband was so late. A step on the path—a stranger’s;
A sudden and nameless fear
Came over the woman waiting
For the step she would no more hear.
‘My husband!’ she cried—‘O tell me!’
And then in his face she read
The tidings he came to bring her
Before a word was said. Dead! and they parted in anger;
Dead! and he could not know
How bitterly she had repented
The words that had vexed him so.
That moment a heart was broken—
Alas for the love-links riven!
Alas for the word unspoken,
And the kiss that was never given!