The editor sat in his old arm-chair

(Half his work undone he was well aware),

While the flickering light in the dingy room

Made the usual newspaper office gloom.

Before him news from the North and South,

A long account of a foreign drouth,

A lot of changes in local ads,

The report of a fight between drunken cads,

And odds and ends and smoke and talk,—

A reporter drawing cartoons in chalk

On the dirty wall, while others laughed,

And one wretch whistled, and all of them chaffed.

But the editor leaned far back in his chair;

He ran his hands through his iron-gray hair,

And stole ten minutes from work to write

A valentine to his wife that night.

He thought of metre, he thought of rhyme.

'Twas a race between weary brains and time.

He tried to write as he used to when

His heart was as young as his untried pen.

He started a sonnet, but gave it up.

A rondeau failed for a rhyme to "cup."

And the old clock ticked his time away,

For the editor's mind would go astray.

He thought of the days when they were young,

And all but love to the winds was flung,

He thought of the way she used to wear

Her wayward tresses of golden hair.

He thought of the way she used to blush.

He thought of the way he used to gush.

And a smile and a tear went creeping down

The face that so long had known a frown.

And this is what the editor wrote:

No poem—merely a little note,

Simple and manly, but tender, too;

Three little words—they were, "I love you."