Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Our secret drawer
OUR SECRET DRAWER.
There is a secret drawer in every heart,
Wherein we lay our treasures one by one;
Each dear remembrance of the buried past;
Each cherished relic of the time that’s gone;
The old delights of childhood long ago;
The things we loved, because we knew them best;
The first discovered primrose in our path;
The cuckoo’s earliest note; the robin’s nest;
The merry hay-makings around our home;
Our rambles in the summer woods and lanes;
The story told beside the winter fire,
While the wind moaned across the window panes;
The golden dreams we dreamt in after years;
Those magic visions of our young romance;
The sunny nooks, the fountains and the flowers,
Gilding the fairy landscape of our trance;
The link which bound us later still to one
Who fills a corner in our life to-day,
Without whose love we dare not dream how dark
The rest would seem, if it were gone away;
The song that thrill’d our souls with very joy;
The gentle word that unexpected came;
The gift we prized, because the thought was kind;
The thousand, thousand things that have no name.
All these in some far hidden corner lie,
Within the mystery of that secret drawer,
Whose magic springs, though stranger hands may touch,
Yet none may gaze upon its guarded store.