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ANTHOLOGY
OF NEWSPAPER VERSE
FOR 1928
By
FRANKLYN PIERRE DAVIS
ANTHOLOGY
OF
NEWSPAPER VERSE
FOR 1928
TENTH ANNUAL ISSUE
BY
FRANKLYN PIERRE ftAVIS
Member Poetry Society of America
Enid, Oklahoma
FRANK P. DAVIS, PUBLISHER
MCMXXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1929
FRANKR& DAVIS.
TO
ARTHUR GOODENOUGH.
CHARLES A. HEATH.
HENRY POLK LOWENSTEIN.
The faithful, who have been represented in
each issue of this work from the beginning.
ANTHOLOGIES.
Anthologies
Are dear to me !
Selected from the best that be,
I love their pages to explore,
And con my favorites o er and o er,
With pleasures growing in degree,
The spotlights on the things to see,
The searchlights of eternity,
The flashlights for the dark before,
Anthologies !
They chart the literary sea
From useless travel us to free
Who seek to see each rarest shore
Nor unfamed beauty would ignore
In life s hurried itinerary,
Anthologies!
C. P. 2\ Zwchel
INTRODUCTION TO THE
TENTH EDITION
Years ago I began collecting newspaper verse for
the purpose of proving to my own satisfaction that
the poetry contributed to newspapers was the best
possible guide to the sentiments and opinions of the
people generally. This is the tenth annual volume
that I have published in proof of my theory that news
paper poetry is a reliable barometer of public senti
ment.
In the last ten years I have read about thirty thou
sand poems. That is, perhaps, a greater number than
has been read by any other person in the same period
of time.
This study has convinced me that newspaper poems
imperfect as many of them are are a much better
indication of the trend of public thought than the
editorials appearing in the same papers. Editorials at
best reflect the opinions of the editors, or what the
editor believes is, or should be, the sentiment of the
people of his community.
Those who wish to learn the reactions of the people
to the current events of this decade will find in these
volumes dependable information. In making selec
tions the editor has not been hampered by any com
mercial or financial restrictions. No one could ever
get into these pages for a consideration, or because of
high position in the literary world. This work pre
sents a true record of ten years study.
Among professional people, lawyers contribute by
far the largest number of poems to the public press.
Ministers, architects and musicians follow in the order
5
named. Seldom do we find a newspaper poem from
the pen of a physician. Among business men, those
interested in large wholesale establishments are more
frequently represented.
Among animals, the dog conies first as a theme for
a poem, with the horse a close second. The daffodil
has more than double the number of all other flowers
combined. The red-winged blackbird leads all other
birds.
The south continues to sing of love and beauty.
The New England states are more often interested in
purely local topics. From Utah comes the sweetest
poems of babies and children. In fact, these are the
leading themes of the poets of that state. California
will not let us forget her big trees and her mountains
and valleys. This year Massachusetts appears to be
having a lot of fun at the expense of prohibition and
flappers.
The general election of 1928 brought out many
poems. All parties had fine, worthy candidates, and
I had hoped for some good poems. It was disap
pointing to find all the poems from the friends of the
old party candidates so intolerant and untrue, that
I feel that I am doing the authors a favor by omitting
all of them from this collection. None were fair
enough to be of any interest to posterity.
The outstanding subjects ; those that represented the
general sentiments of the people were: burial at sea,
aviation and the use of liquor and tobacco by young
girls.
As usual there were themes that seemed to run over
the country like a rippling wave. Burial at sea was
a prominent topic. This was, perhaps, due to the num
ber of disasters that occurred during the year. Per
sons living far inland, who probably had never been
6
where they could see the sea waves washing the sands
of the shore and painting the beach with pebbles and
shells, wrote much of the sea. The sea was of gen
eral interest in all parts of the country. Aviation and
airships were common topics. Many deplored the
growing use of tobacco and liquor by young girls.
From every point came poems praising the daffodil.
This flower is ever represented by many poems. It
is not easy to understand why this flower should prove
such a favorite with the people generally.
Vermont seemed to take her flood very seriously.
In contrast with the big flood in the south, if we
should judge from the number of poems on each, we
would be compelled to believe that Vermont sustained
a much greater damage than the whole of the Missis
sippi flood district.
California appears to have the greater number of
newspaper poets, with New York, Texas, Virginia,
South Carolina and Utah following in the order named.
In the past ten years I have received poems from
every state and from Alaska and Hawaii, with the
single exception of Nevada. I have tried through all
the sources at my command to find a newspaper poem
published in Nevada, but have failed.
I want to thank the following columnists for remem
bering me with clippings from their columns: R. H.
L., "A Line o Type or Two," Chicago (III.) Daily
Tribune; "From Pillar to Post," Chicago (III) Daily
Post; P. E. B., "The Gulf Scream," Tampa (Fla.)
Morning Tribune; Googie, "Side Lights," Ithaca (N.
Y.) Journal-Neivs; Lila N. Flint, "State Chat," Lewis-
ton (Maine) Daily Sun; Howard Case, "Down to
Cases," Honolulu (Hawaii) Star-Bulletin; Lee Shippy,
"The Lee Side o L, A.," Los Angeles (Calif.) Times;
Ad. B. Schuster, "The Other Fellow," Oakland
7
(Calif.) Tribune; W. Chesley Worthington, "These
Plantations," Providence (R. I.) Journal; Clarence L.
Peaslee, "Attic Salt," Williams port (Pa.) Sun; Tessa
Sweazy Webb, "Voices and Echos," Columbus (Ohio)
Dispatch; Ellen M. Carroll, "Choir Practice," Charles
ton (S. C.) Evening Post.
FRANKLYN PIERRE DAVIS.
8
THE POETIC HOUSEWIFE.
This day two poems I have achieved
And each, I know, is good.
One was a simple, wholesome meal
Of plain yet well-cooked food.
One was a line of snowy clothes
Flying in the autumn breeze
Against a background of sturdy vines
And a row of orchard trees.
Blue is the sky ; the clouds are white ;
Contented is my mood.
Two poems I have achieved this day :
And each, I know, is good.
The Albany Democrat-Herald. Mary Jane Carter.
I HAVE TROD OUT THE WINEPRESS ALONE.
Who cometh from Edom now tell me
With garments in crimson all dyed?
Who thus from the bondage of Egypt
Is scattered again far and wide?
Fm Israel, thy Israel, Jehovah,
Knowest thou not our Father Thine Own?
One led by the Cloud and the Pillar
I have trod out the winepress alone.
I have trod out the winepress alone !
I have seen strange cities arising;
I -have seen mighty empires decay ;
I have seen time, tide and Thy tempests
Sweep false gods with their makers away,
Yet I am the same, O Jehovah,
With the scroll and the vision and stone ;
Grief and the tears and the burden of years
I have trod out the winepress alone.
I have trod out the winepress alone !
The American Hebrew. Flora Cameron Burr.
BLUEBIRDS.
I dreamed three bluebirds
In a tree
Flew down
And perched upon my knee.
They were endowed with
Human voices,
Their words
Made my sad heart rejoice.
These were the words they
Said to me :
Love, faith
And immortality . . .
Then I awoke. In a
Tall tree
Bluebirds
Were singing merrily.
The Birmingham News. Mary Pollard Tynes.
A LA ADVERTISING.
By the shores of Cuticura
By the sparkling Pluto Water,
Lived the Prophylatic Chiclet,
Danderine, fair Buick s daughter.
She was loved by Instant Postum,
Son of Camels and Victrola ;
Heir apparent to the Mazda ;
Of the tribe of Coca Cola.
Through the Shredded Wheat they wandered,
Through the darkness strolled the lovers,
Lovely little Wrigley Chiclet;
Washed by Fairy, fed by Postum,
No Pyrene can quench the fire,
Nor an Aspirin still the heartache,
Of my Prest-o-lite desire ;
Let us marry, little Djer-Kiss.
The Boston Herald. William H. Hoivard.
10
JAZZ LOVE.
He met her at the Chateau d Or,
A snappy dancing place,
She was a quiet little thing
With such a pretty face.
He was a gay collegian
Who thought he knew the game
But in the ways of dancing girls
Believe me he was lame.
He trotted round the town with her
And gave her lots of things ;
Among them was a Chow Chow dog,
A watch and ruby ring.
And one night when the saxophones
Droned like a storm at sea
He whispered, as he held her tight,
"Dear, will you marry me?"
"Oh, Charlie, darling, let me think
Until tomorow comes."
And then she wrote "I have eloped
With the Greek who plays the drums."
The Boston Herald. James! L. Edwards.
PROTECTION.
I took a girl to supper
At the ritziest place in town,
She wore a half a yard of stuff
That she declared a gown,
Her knees stuck out,
Her neck was bare,
There seemed no covering anywhere,
Well, anyhow, her head had hair !
But appearances deceived me,
She was clothed in arrogance,
Not all the petticoats and panties
Of her grandmothers and aunties
Could afford such impregnable defence.
It was immense !
The Boston Herald R. C. Skinner.
11
LINES FOR A NAMELESS GRAVE.
Over his head a chantey drones in the keen salt wind
and the stinging spray,
Plucked like a plangent murmurous chord on mighty,
muted strings,
What time Poseidon sings
The songs Ulysses heard or ever the glad young world
grew old and gray.
Here he lies in his final port, with the breakers boom
ing under
The sonorous hollowed scarp of the grim tormented
cliffs around
That echo the sound
Of the circling sea gull s lonely cry and the ancient
ocean s thunder,
Here he sleeps unvexed by the horror of nights that
never pass,
By the cold incurious stare of stars, or the dead moon s
rays,
Here, lucky fool, his days
Find nepenthe deep in the whispering salt-encrusted
grass.
The Boston Herald. Ernie.
OLD POEM REVISED.
Give me three drinks of gin, mother,
Only three drinks of gin ;
It will" keep the little life I have
Till the party does begin.
I am dying of aches and shakes, mother,
Dying of aches and shakes;
But the droning tones of saxophones
My weary soul awakes.
Light me a cigarette, mother,
Just one more cigarette;
I m as cold as a frog on an icy log,
But I m far from croaking yet.
12
A cat has nine lives, mother,
And rarely needs but one;
But I d like a new life, mother,
At the rising of every sun.
What is that honking sound, mother,
That weird and soothing sound?
Oh* yes, it s Jack, in his Cadillac,
Who promised to take me round.
The Boston Herald. James L. Edwards.
MAKE THE WORLD A LITTLE BETTER.
Make the world a little better !
As you journey day by day,
Share some blessing with another
Lift some stone from out the way,
Speak a word of consolation
To some mirthless misanthrope
Heal some hurt or soothe some sorrow
If you have not gold give hope!
Make the world a little better !
As you mingle in the throng
Spare a tear for him that sorrows
Cheer the weary with a song.
When you overtake a pilgrim,
Fainting on the sterile slope
Wake his failing courage, somehow
If you have not gold give hope !
Make the world a little better !
As you briefly bide therein ;
Break some captive s galling fetter,
Lift some sinking heart from sin.
All of human resolution
Men require if they would cope
With life s grief and disillusion
If you have not gold give hope !
The Brattleboro Reformer. Arthur Goodenough.
13
VILLANELLE OF A LADY CONTENT.
Husbands are cast in no perfect mould
(A sentiment probably rather trite)
And they re rarely Adonises to behold.
They always refuse to do as they re told ;
Unshaven, they look like a genuine fright ;
Husbands are cast in no perfect mould.
They paw one at times, or else they re too cold;
Their bark oftentimes is as bad as a bite,
And they re rarely Adonises to behold.
They sometimes come home a la wolf on the fold
(i. e., savage), when business does not go aright;
Husbands are cast in no perfect mould.
They re likely to fall for a vampire bold,
Especially once they re out of sight,
And they re rarely Adonises to behold.
But I wouldn t trade mine for a galleon of gold,
For I know though he acts not, nor looks, like a knight,
Husbands are cast in no perfect mould,
And they re rarely Adonises to behold.
The Boston Herald. Helene R. B.
SILVER LININGS.
Sombre, ominous clouds, storm ridden,
Hurtle through the sky.
Crash of thunder, wild streaks of lightning
All earth terrify.
Wielding thus His awe inspiring,
Sometimes chastening rod,
Regulating wind, fire and clamor,
Speaks Almighty God.
Fleecy clouds through the heavens drifting,
Serenely and light,
Shadows casting o er hills and valleys
When the sun shines bright,
Tempering heat that else were blighting
On earth and on man,
Carrying out, omipotently,
Nature s own wise plan.
14
Bowing beneath life s darksome burdens
Mankind struggles on,
Ever seeking, forever hoping
Happiness beyond.
Vain all such hope and all such seeking
While man looks afar,
Seeking things that will quickly enter
If hearts are ajlar.
Every cloud has a silver lining
When the moon shines through ;
Every life can its sorrow banish
If hearts remain true;
Every woe of this earth would vanish
And peace would prevail
If man to man would be but honest
And justice entail.
The Boston Post. Edivin Gordon Lawrence.
THE GLORY OF HER FACE.
Del Sarto saw some beauty everywhere,
But when Love came and threw his fateful dart,
There was a form so graven on his heart,
It never lost its fadeless glory there ;
For her, his wife, his model and despair,
He sacrificed both fortune and his art,
Yet gave his wayward love a life apart,
In one bright picture that the world found fair.
O Faultless Painter, with what matchless grace,
Your sweet Madonna beams on all below!
There shine the lineaments you loved to trace,
From your Lucrezia centuries ago ;
A glory given to a human face,
No earthly art could so divinely show.
The Boston Transcript. Washington Van Dusen,
PICARO.
Even supposing they find me dead,
With a knife at my side in a scabbard of red,
All over a kiss or a nubbin of bread ;
Is that not a fate less bitter to dread
Than dying slowly in my own bed,
While I pluck at the sheet that will cover my head ?
The Burlingame Advance-Star. Lee Hinton.
15
THE BUM LAMB.
In herder s parlance, a bum, or bummer is a disowned or
motherless lamb.
While wandering campwards late today,
Upon a mound of gumbo clay
I found a pitiful little shape
With sides caved in and mouth agape ;
Poor orphan lamb.
Oft have I watched you while on trail,
With lagging feet and tremulous tail ;
Watched and pitied, more than you knew
When you got knocked flat by a militant ewe,
Thou luckless lamb.
O futile life that you have led;
No Ma to teach you where to bed,
Or gently baa ! you up to lunch
When you were playing with the bunch.
Wee bummer lamb.
That bickering plaintive little bleat
Was just a plea for more to eat.
But when you tried to rush the gate,
Some watchful mother banged your pate.
I ll say so, lamb.
Came autumn winds and slushy snow,
The toothpick legs refused to go.
The bunch went on ; a coyote pup
Looked you over, but passed you up.
Poor boney lamb.
Here on this mound enjoy your sleep.
May you go to Heaven and find Bo-Peep
And throw in with her long lost lambs
Enjoy good care; forget earth s slams.
Wee flattened lamb.
Here on a slab of virgin pine
This epitaph I gladly sign:
"His time on earth was full of strife;
Fate switched him away from the stream of life."
I mean the lamb.
The Casper Independent. Red Cummings.
16
THE VALLEY OF LONGING.
Encircled by mountains mighty,
Bridged over with sullen skies,
A country of dreams and visions
The Valley of Longing lies ;
A naked and sterile valley
Where never a blossom shows
And never a green thing gladdens
The traveler as he goes.
Like phantoms, like wraiths, like goblins
The vapors arise and crawl
And the clouds like threatening pinions
Droop dismally over all.
And over this weary valley
And the folk who dwell therein
Grimly two shadows hover
The shadow of death and sin !
Does your heart interpret the picture ?
You will know it by and by !
The world is the Valley of Longing
And the dwellers are you and I !
And no man has read the secret,
And no man has solved the sign ;
Tho sages and seers have striven
For the purpose is one divine !
And up from the Valley of Longing
Leads a beautiful shining stair
At the summit with hands outreaching
Stands the stately Angel of Prayer!
The Brattleboro Reformer. Arthur Goodenough.
SUMMER SOLSTICE ON THE
WAPSIPINICON.
On to the ocean . . . onward lovely stream
And cool the yellow birch along your edges ;
Leave me among these clean hills with my dream
Leave me the cedars, rooting in your ledges.
Leave me your blue-gill and your water thrush
Give me the mellow song that marks your flowing :
That noisy Chat, now mating in the brush,
Tipsy with bir,d-love, sobs to watch your going.
17
Always you leave us, river, yet you stay,
Your endless silver ribbon keeps unwinding ;
Now youthful Summer woos his tender way,
Bringing you jeweled treasures of his finding.
Moons of the sky hang over you each night,
Lighting your path and giving soft caresses :
Suns of the solstice noons are hot and bright
To wake the lustre of your willow tresses.
The wild rose in the pastures tells how you
Each June have whispered sweet things to the swallow
And how before the Summer s span wore through
He flutters back on wings too weak to follow.
Then leave me here, my river, let me dream!
Useless my ardent pledges of devotion :
God, it is hard to love a queenly stream
And have a heartless rival like the ocean !
The Cedar Rapids Gazette. Jay G. Sigmund.
AT HATTERAS LIGHT.
Here where the frail white strips of sand
Shake in the desolate sea,
The withered sedges wail on the edges
Of wind-bitten dunes and sandy ledges,
And the wind blows over me.
The wind blows over, and swift, wild horsemen
Toss white hair in the sun,
And I hear the crying gulls and the flying
Curlews forever calling and crying,
Crying till time is done.
I look at the lighthouse tower and wonder
When I shall cease to be ;
And the wind blows over the dead sea-rover,
Over the bones of lover and lover,
Over the world and me.
The Charleston Post. Howard Mumford Jones.
18
SEES ZEP LOVE BOAT.
Sail on, thou ship of the fickle skies,
Sail on midst thy dreams ;
Sail on, linking worlds in love s bright ties,
Sail on, on Friendship s beams.
(To us, the great thing about the above poem is that the
bard has succeeded in an unusual feat. Every line not only
begins with "s," which is easy enough, but also ends with "s,"
which is marvelous. Editor From Pillar to Post.)
The Chicago Evening Post. Rev. Henry C. Offerman.
BREMEN.
The Baron set his monocle. The airmen buckled
leather.
And were the corpses smiling when they started out
together ?
Hawk hawk hawking with an Irish green behind
And dabs of clouded Prussian blue a-woven in the
wind.
A million sods along the Somme were devilishly
sundered
To let the dead ones listen for a motor as it thundered,
Hawk hawk hawking (You could tell em by the
sound
Whether ours or Jerry s was the bird above the
ground) !
Hawk hawk hawking. . . . And who were those
a-riding
Flush against the wing tips with their Emma Gees
a-hiding ?
Lufbery and Richthof en and all the R. F. C.
Come to take formation in a crimson century!
Pray we could have seen them when a petrol pipe was
colder,
On the ice of Labrador where all the breeze is bolder
Pray we d heard the cheering of the Munster Fusiliers,
And the Landwehr laughing off across the angry years.
The Chicago Tribune. McKmley Kantor.
19
A SMILE.
The only thing to do with a smile
Is to wear it on your face
And make it welcome any while
To occupy the place,
There showing joy without disguise
Then spread it will apace,
Just like a sunbeam multiplies
Upon a baby s face.
A smile will keep the day atune,
- Good Nature knew its worth
By putting in our month of June
A smile around the earth;
And while its revolutions run
Unceasingly thru space
The moon joins in about the sun
With a smile upon its face.
The sweetest thing to do with a smile
Is to keep it on the face,
By gold untold yet not worth while
In any other place ;
Man richer is than Sheba s queen
With all her Ophir lace
Who gains the name he long has been,
"The man with a smiling face."
This secret my beloved knew ;
Oh ! I can see her face
Where loveliness more lovely grew
So plainly could one trace
The winsome smile which hovered there,
And adding grace to grace,
Left all entranced when she would share
That smile upon her face.
The Chicago Post. Charles A. Heath.
AFTER THE COLLISION.
A swerve and wildly shrieking brakes,
The crash of splintered glass;
A reeling world revolves and quakes
Into a tangled mass ;
20
I fall through vast eternities
Within a second s space.
Then deadened brain and blinded eyes
A soundless, empty place . . ,
Must I come back to noise and men
Go through this door called Death again?
The Charleston Post. Louise Crenshaw Ray.
BITTERSWEET.
With strong white arm,
Aloft he holds the pledge goblet,
Filled with wine,
And through the lustre
Of its ruby charm,
Glow radiant years, all mine.
Parched lips would hungry taste
Life s sweetness once again;
Lest anything of joy should waste
Every shining drop would drain.
In vain,
For now with palsied hand
I hold this heavy cup,
Dark dregs of wormwood
For me to sup.
Discontent, its poison sears me,
Yet I make no cry
Only my soul shrieks,
Dear God, let me die !
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Georgia D. Valentiner.
ELEGY.
So fair she lay, the brown hair s silken grace
Smoothed softly from her tranquil, quiet face;
And they who came and stood beside her bier
Mourned for her youth, her life so brief and dear.
Till one who knew how much those years had held,
How broad the stream that from her spirit welled,
Spoke gently as she touched the shrouding gown :
"She did her work and then she laid it down."
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Ruth Winslow Gordon.
21
LET NOT YOUTH READ
Youth
Blows through the world
Like little, laughing flames,
Like the forsythia yellow flame
Youth burns into blossom
Before it bears leaves.
Hear Youth ! Hear Youth
Swagger, and strut, and brag quaintly
Of the world it will make for us
Who are old who are old
And who have made the world for them
So badly.
And we
Imploringly,
Stretch out our hands to Youth,
Not for the world it promises,
But to warm us at the flame.
For we know
We know
That when the leaves come
The flame blossoms will fall
And die.
Let not Youth read this.
Let not Youth read this.
The Chicago Tribune. Billy D.
EASTER.
Hail ! Glorious day of hope to all,
Upon this Heaven-haunted ball,
Where Angels have events foretold
That all mankind in reverence hold
Hail ! Easter Morn of Life and Love
Gift of the Lord above!
Though dark and drear the skies may lower,
There is the ever-present Power,
Who bid us evermore rejoice
With cheerful, glad, adoring voice
For Death both conquered been by One
The God Head s Well-Beloved Son!
22
Exult ye souls who once were sad!
Exult, and evermore be glad!
With harp, and organ, violin,
And every instrument begin
To reach the farthest zones of earth,
Praising the Savior s worth !
Let Heaven and Earth unite this day,
And own thy universal sway
Thou Man of Galilee ! we see
Our Brother, King and Deity!
Hail Lord of Love and Light alway
Whom Heaven and Earth obey !
The Chicopee Herald. William Kimberley Palmer.
BEING A FRIEND.
Being a friend is a gallant adventure
You who attempt it must have in your breast
Courage unfailing, and faith that no censure
Daunts or dismays. You must give of your best;
Even before there is call for the favor
You must be ready to give or to lend.
You must stand stanch though the whole world should
waver
This is the meaning of being a friend.
Being a friend is an endless endeavor,
Not for a moment and not for a day,
Not for a year, but all time and forever
There is no turning along friendship s way.
Ever in moments of triumphant gladness
You must be ready to praise and commend,
Ready with tears for the seasons of sadness
Never must sympathy fail for a friend.
Being a friend takes the best that is in you.
Give it ungrudging, not stopping to count
What it will cost you or what it will win you
He makes an error who checks the amount
Added or given from out friendship s coffer.
Summing it up when you come to the end,
Life has no prouder achievement to offer,
Nothing that s finer than being a friend.
The Cincinnati Times-Star. B. Y. Williams.
23
HUSH YOUR LIPS FROM LAUGHTER.
Hush your lips from laughter,
For had we never known
Drift-fires full of shadows
And trees the wind has blown
We might meet another time,
Almost anywhere,
Nor, smiling at far stranger things,
I am certain, care
Softly when this Autumn brings
(Hidden in your eyes)
Half -remembered kisses
And half-forgotten lies . . .
The Chicago Tribune. Donfarran.
"HE WAS CRAZY WHEN HE DID IT."
Johnny was a cracker jack when only four years old ;
He brought the kitten in the house, and fed it fish of
gold.
The mirror and the eight-day clock, they met complete
destruction
When Johnny got the hammer, and it would have
caused a ruction,
But Mother said, "Now, Daddy dear, don t kick up a
row!
He was crazy when he did it. But he s all right now."
In school the teacher often found that pepper filled the
air;
Live mice she found within her desk, and tacks upon
her chair.
The culprit was young Johnny he admitted that twas
he;
She told his doting parents what the punishment would
be.
"No! No!!" they cried. "Don t touch our son! for if
you do we fight ! ! !
He was crazy when he did it. But now he s quite all
right/
When Johnny was a sheik, like Georgie Porgie Pigeon
Pie,
24
He often kissed the flappers, and he sometimes made
them cry.
They ran and told their mammas, and their mammas
told his pop.
Pa would have thrashed him soundly, but his mamma
made him stop.
"Now, Daddy dear, restrain yourself! Abuse I ll not
allow.
He was crazy when he did it. But he s all right now."
When other crimes had grown too tame, John killed a
man one day.
"We mustn t let this poor boy hang," his tearful
lawyers say.
The judge and all the people couldn t fathom such a
mind
Too crazy to be punished and too sane to be confined.
The jury said, "We ll fix it." So they did, and here
is how:
"He was crazy when he did it ! But he s all right now."
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Edwin C. Walley.
TULE JEWELS.
Like rubies flaming in the morning sun
Lightly, dew-pearled, in my pale palm they rest
Rich trophies plucked from fields but recent won
From wastes where wandering wild fowl used to nest.
They grew mid music of a glorious choir
The meadow-lark s sweet harmony of song,
Summer s antiphonal of wind and fire,
And chants that labor s lusty lungs prolong.
Rhine s terraced vineyards or Spain s finest grove
No choicer riches than these ever hold ;
More useful they than India s treasure trove,
Golconda s gems or Klondyke s gleaming gold.
Aye, truly may man rear his dream-wrought towers,
Regild with poet s fancy fair demesnes,
When he has vigor gained for toil-filled hours
From magic stored within these jeweled beans.
The Christian Science Monitor. Oscar H. Roesner.
25
ROADSIDE MARKETS.
No more do we go marketing
In crowded city stalls,
And buy of girls in gingham gowns,
Or men in overalls.
We buy at roadside market stands
Where toothsome things are seen,
Of farmer boys in Sunday garb
And maids in crepe de chine.
The bees that make the golden combs
Of honey there displayed,
Fly humming o er our very heads,
While working at their trade.
The cows that gave the fragrant pats
Of butter which we buy,
Are watching us from pasture bars
With ruminative eye.
Dear Grandma pieced those patchwork quilts,
And Mother made the jams ;
And Grandpa, with some hick ry smoke,
Fixed those fine country hams.
The pickled pears and plum preserves
Were made by sister Kitty.
But that large sign tells half a truth :
They re all fresh from the city.
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Adaline H. Taiwan.
THE FLY-UP-THE-CREEK.
Note: The green heron is sometimes called the keywhack,
because that is what it says, and the fly-up-the-creek, because
that is what it does.
Where the creek banks fail at a river s marge,
And races the packet and drifts the barge,
I stand on a log as the world runs by,
And little there is escapes my eye.
I watch the kingfisher picket the shore,
The waft of swallows above the stream,
The scuttle of crabs on the river floor,
And the great blue heron s humorous dream
Keywhack, keywhack, what a bivouac!
When dwindles the noon, and day is antique,
I fly up the creek, I fly up the creek.
26
The creek is the place for fowls like me :
I have sat on its every walnut tree,
And numbered the willows, rank on rank,
And the sycamores along either bank;
And I know the holes where the sunfish hide,
And the pools where the small frogs make a tune,
And the things that the cricket-folk confide
In the lazy province of afternoon.
Keywhack, keywhack, it is good to be back!
For what is there more that a bird may seek?
I fly up the creek, I fly up the creek.
Where the creek winds westward, my gaunt wife breeds
In an elder bush, in a land of weeds ;
And out of the nest there comes a cry
For minnow, tadpole and dragonfly.
But I am a rover, born and bred,
And while my young ones clamor for food,
I think of stretches of stream ahead,
And all the pleasures of solitude,
Keywhack, keywhack, tis a gluttonous pack!
With hail and farewell in my fatherly shriek,
I fly up the creek, I fly up the creek.
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Clark B. Firestone.
PRAYER.
I thank Thee, Lord, for little things
Of life aside from daily bread.
Brown velvet of the plover s wings,
The silver of the spider s web.
The plaintive pipe of nestlings after dark,
The booming of an angry sea,
Fire crackling on the open hearth
These, Lord, are melody to me.
And Thou has made the burnished gold
Of sunset sky and autumn grain,
The fragrance of the mignonette,
The smell of warm earth after rain.
O blessed God who offers these,
The gifts of land and air and sea,
Now grant an understanding heart
To think Thy thoughts with Thee.
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Elisabeth Williams.
27
STILL WATERS.
Her life flowed on like a quiet stream,
Steady and deep and slow,
That catches the sunlight s brilliant gleam
And the moonlight s softest glow;
And only the happy things were there
On the water s mirror face,
The sturdy trees and the blossoms fair
Reflected with added grace
So none might see that a constant grief
Lay hidden deep or know,
From the placid pool and the floating leaf,
The strength of the undertow.
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Ruth Winslow Gordon.
THE BROKEN SONG.
You say that there are no pixies or fays,
And the small folk only a tale?
You can believe it with me, there s a fairy that plays
In a shady secluded vale
Where the gnomes and the nixies and elfin folk lurk,
And the sprites and the leprechauns throng;
For I saw him one twilight there, hard at work
A-mending a broken song.
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Howard Maxwell Bogart.
THE FOLLOWER.
(Dedicated to All Leaders.)
I have followed with my fathers, seeking golden goals
you pointed,
I have followed from the river-drift and floe
From the prehistoric clay
To the chance of yesterday,
And you fail me as you failed me long ago.
You have led and I have followed oh, the eager quest
ing footsteps
Of the slave become the hero heart afire,
Till the fateful morning came,
When you left me, to your shame,
For the paltry, passing gaud of your desiu
28
You have asked, and I have given, all the human trust
within me ;
You have led me by the love-strings of my soul
And to-day upon your hands
Lies the heartache of all lands,
And to-day I m blindly groping for the goal.
I, the mock of all the ages, ever seeking never finding ;
I, the everlasting sacrifice to power;
I, the pawn with which each gambles
Till I m herded to the shambles
And my heart s blood pays the reckoning hour by hour.
I have followed with my fathers petty princes I ve
created,
And they fail me as they failed me long ago :
So I still must pay the toll
In the anguish of my soul
Till I learn to lead myself where I would go.
The Concord Daily Monitor. Jack Lively.
ON THE EVENING AIR.
Stars of the night bring a message to me
From one who is far away;
A new moon is sailing the sunset sea
And dusk dims the dying day.
Wind of the night, waft my message a-f ar
Where one is waiting to hear ;
I have wished a wish on the wishing star
To lend him comfort and cheer.
The red rose is drooping her petals low
Soft leaves are sighing above ;
It is time at twilight, the world must know,
To hear the whisper of love.
A new moon is sailing the sunset sea,
I ve wished on the wishing star;
Stars of the night, give his message to me
And waft my message a-far.
The Columbtis Dispatch. Mildred Schanck.
29
MOSS.
In cool and cloistered groves I often see
In fragile beauty growing near the ground
Soft moss in deep jade green; there is no sound.
No pulse, no whispered words of melody,
Clinging to loam or rock or swaying tree,
Its silky texture is securely bound,
Protecting like the bandage on a wound ;
The loveliness of moss is poetry.
There is a mystery in silent things
Enwrapped in tranquilness of latticed wood,
Nor storms can stir their peaceful solitude,
So like the twining of rememberings,
As April brings new faith in bursting flower.
Such miracle is found in mossy bower.
The Columbus Dispatch. Tessa Sweazy Webb.
CANDLE-LIGHT.
My candles weave
For me at night,
Slow shadow-drifts
Of fragile light,
Pale little dreams
That pierce the gloom
Around my heart ;
About my room.
The Columbus Citizen. Helen Myra Ross.
SOME DAY.
Oh ! some day, I shall have a house,
A lawn and garden plot to keep,
A flag-stone path amid tall flowers,
An ivy-shaded porch to sweep.
Some day a house will be our home,
Where little folk will sing and play ;
And we shall know great happiness
When that house is our home some day!
The Columbus Dispatch. Mary . Schanck.
30
SUNLIGHT ON THE HILLS.
As a bud long held in thraldom
Would unfold in beauteous bloom,
So sought a bondage melody
To scatter clouds of gloom.
Elusive, dim, insistent,
It strove to penetrate
The mistiness of vanished years,
Faint courage to elate.
At length with noontide fullness
My consciousness it fills :
"Though shadows veil the valley,
There s sunlight on the hills."
Fell on my heart its music
As dew on drooping flowers !
A glowing rainbow spanned the sky,
Irradiant, the hours!
Now when the heavens lower,
Gray clouds are hanging low,
And memory keeps fingering
The strings of Long Ago,
I voice this angel message
Till calm my spirit fills :
"Though shadows veil the valley,
There s sunlight on the hills."
The Comvay News. Cora Barber Crary.
WILD NIGHT WIND.
Cold, silent prowler of the dark,
Merciless, relentless and stark,
Sweeping in from the subterranean seas. . . .
To stir my frail rose bush sleeping neath the eaves.
With hints of winter in her eyes,
She swoops down a prey from the skies,
Scattering the roses to their early death,
And flinging its fragrance in mood of wrath.
It claws at your window like cats,
Leering at you like phantom bats,
Pleading you to dare her enter your chamber
That blustering plunderer of a rambler.
The Daily Nippu Jiji. Isami Morita.
31
WEEDS.
We walked together, hand in hand,
One long past night in June ;
We found a field of lady s lace
Swaying beneath the moon ;
I gathered some, you sharply spoke :
"The weed will spoil your dress."
And carelessly you tossed aside
Their patterned loveliness.
God wove, with all his artistry,
A pattern in my heart,
Of love for you, but you decreed
Our fate it was to part;
My love for you was judged a weed,
To toss in scorn aside,
And like the lady s lace that night
My love, uprooted, died.
The Cincinnati Times-Star. Annette Pat ton Cornell.
MOTHER.
Tawamure ni
Haha wo seoite sonoamari
Karokini nageki sanpo ayumazu.
Ishikawa Takuboku.
Playfully, I carry my mother
As she carried me of yore ;
Her unexpected lightness startle me
I am unable to take three steps afore!
The Daily Nippu Jiji. Shinju AkahoshL
CHALLENGE.
Death, I am not afraid of you.
You shall not drop me into nothingness.
I have seen a worm turn into a butterfly . . .
When you think you have conquered me,
By breaking my body in two,
You will find that you have made a door
For the hand of God to reach through.
The Dothan Eagle. Scottie McKenzie Frasier.
32
SEA CHILD.
Up from the lap of the sea when the bubbles of morn
ing were breaking,
Showering crumbles of gold to the quivering lips of
the dawn ;
Up from the beckoning beach when the eyes of the
waves were awaking,
Cheeta came gathering driftwood, dipping along like a
fawn.
Cheeta came singing a song, interlaced in a tatting of
laughter,
Scattering atoms of hope to the sorrowing hearts left
aland ;
Dancing ahead of the waves, while the ripples came
following after,
Reaching their tongues to the footprints cut in the
wavering sand.
Weaving an intricate step to the orchestral drums of
the ocean,
Strange as the fantastic voice of the silvery winds of
Capri ;
Singing a song to the waves, in a whispering surge of
emotion
Heir to the calm or the tempest, moods of the vast
mother sea.
The Detroit News. Helen Janet Miller.
TO AN OLD DESK.
In this dim corner of the antique shop.
Where sunlight filters through a dusty pane,
And spiders weave a never-ending chain,
Where visitors are few, nor many stop,
This fragile little desk, with ink-stained top,
And worn with years and pale with water-stain,
Lost and forgotten as an old refrain,
But serves a stringless cello as a prop.
Perhaps a maiden spilled out her heart s tide,
Bending above it, on some day of old ;
Perhaps a poet, crouching at its side,
Beat out his dream in words of burning gold ;
What memories, O little desk, are yours
Of gay cloud-castles or of mad amours ?
The Dallas Morning News. Berta Hart Nance.
33
THE CHRISTMAS BELLS.
Swinging, ringing, joyously swaying,
Peal after peal on the ambient air,
Spreading the song o hope o er the landside,
Ring the sweet bells their glad anthem of prayer.
Whirling, swirling, mirthfully swinging
High above earth in the tall belfry tower,
Ring the fond bells their inspiring message :
That Love is the great, the exalting power.
Shouting, routing, ringing triumphant,
Hark to the peals of the clamorous bells !
List to the song contained in their story,
The glad song of Love which their message tells :
"Peace upon earth/ so runs the story;
"Good will unto men," it tells us to show ;
Thus does this message signify Heaven
May be by us brought down to earth below.
Swinging, ringing, joyously swaying,
Filled with the spirit of Christ at His birth,
Gladly the bells proclaim the grand story :
"Good will unto men and peace upon earth."
The El Paso Times. Edwin Gordon Lawrence.
SUBMARINE S-4.
We shall forget, who can look on the still
Gray twilight wandering down the earth to where
Our hearthstones blaze with crackling flames that spill
Their lovely, leaping brilliance on her hair.
Safe in our warm sweet oneness we shall hold
Our dreams intact, nor turn a grieving head
To those lost voices calling from the cold
Wet dungeons of the lonely, submerged dead.
We shall forget, who did not feel the smash
Of splintering, ramming steel, the wild descent
Down smothering waves that swirl and crowd and
crash
With suffocating strength; the limbs that bent
Through centuries of pain; the torturing tap
Of hope that mocked the faint, quick, struggling
breath
Of men who ached to live ; the last long rap
That brought no answer but the void of death.
34
We shall forget this brave, young, martyred blood,
Thrilling at stars and sunlight and the keen
Storm- winds of angry seas. That knew the flood
Of passion s highest tides, yet wore the clean
White robings of a soul bound by the dear
Imprisonment of love s enrapturing bands.
We shall forget while they recall the smear
Of their own children s sticky, dimpled hands!
The Detroit News. Cecelia Maloney.
IN MEMORIAM.
James Whitcomb Riley.
I ve bin huntin hants uv Riley
Down upon the Brandeywine,
An a-feelin kinder smiley,
When their shadders intertwine.
Round the alter uv my bein ,
Az in years uv long ago,
When the ceilin uv my seein
Wuz a million miles I know.
Fur hiz foot prints I ve bin huntin ,
In the sands along the crick,
Whar he uster hang hiz buntin*
In the shadders cool and thick.
While he paddled in the water
Made immortal by hiz pen,
An it seemed that he had orter
Greet me with hiz, "Hello Hen!"
But he z ambled to a country,
Out uv sight uv kith an kin,
An I only hear the echo,
Uv hiz passin mid the din.
To what bourne beyond the river,
Whar their harps are never still,
An the muse is tuned forever
To the wisdom of His will,
The Greenfield Daily Reporter. Henry Coffin Fellow.
35
THE HAPPIER TOMORROW.
If this should prove the all of life,
Which I am sure can never be,
What little would I hope to do
Beyond the hurry and the strife,
Its common joy and melody
The something fine and good and true ?
What could I bring this dear old earth
To leave it happier, indeed,
And count for something till the last,
What little gaiety or mirth,
What comfort filling sorrow s need,
What sunshine after storms have passed?
O heart of me, keep wide awake
To pleasure sweet I may bestow
Upon my loved ones here and there!
Let me consider just their sake,
Sing them the songs they d love to know
Built out of truth and beauty fair.
The Detroit News. Myrtella Sutherland
THE CROSS IN FLANDERS.
There s a wooden cross in Flanders, by a sunken
mound of clay,
And the poppies bloom beneath it while the breezes
softly blow,
And they sing their dirge of sorrow in a sad and
solemn way,
For the soldier boy who s sleeping where the Flanders
poppies grow.
There are rows and rows of crosses but my heart
knows only one,
And the poppies bloom beneath them while the breezes
whisper low,
Neath each cross there sleeps a soldier resting now, his
duty done,
And they sleep in peace together there in Flanders row
and row.
36
I ll go sometimes to Flanders, for my heart will know
the way,
And when I kneel beside them, the poppies flaming
red,
The heart that there is sleeping in the little mound of
clay
Will know my voice and listen, though he sleeps with
Flanders dead.
The Enid Eagle. Helen Parkinson-NeaL
MEMORIES.
Like a mighty hand you hold me,
In the fragrance of the breeze,
Wonderful the things you ve told me,
Memories,
Memories,
How you play with me and tease.
Come caress me and enfold me,
Live again, sweet memories.
As the blossoms all about me,
Give their honey to the bees,
Grant me yours and never doubt me,
Memories,
Memories,
We re adrift on cloying seas,
Say that you can t live without me,
And make love, fair memories.
When my heart is cold and aching,
Stranded on black wind-lashed seas,
Often I can feel it breaking,
Memories,
Memories,
Touch again those wondrous keys,
Joy and life and love awaking,
Live with me, true memories.
The Estes Park Trail Elwood H. Sheppard.
37
A CHINESE GARDEN.
The slant of the moon
Shedding a glow of yellow light
Over pagodas,
Reaching to some celestial height
On wings suspended
Through the heavens of saffron hue
To the drowsy peal
Of temple bells in cadence true ;
The scent of incense
Drugs the surrounding atmosphere
And weird melodies
Of ancient Cathay you may hear.
Before you dragons
Symbols of death and disaster
Twist their slimy forms
And you are no more the master, . . .
Lies at your feet as if a-throb
A dark naked pool
While from some strange nook
Tortured violins sob.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Isami Morita.
KILAUEA.
Hurled from the depths of the quaking earth,
From the womb of hell that gave it birth,
A seething sea in livid ire,
Spewed the land with liquid fire ;
The air was filled with flame and smoke.
And rent by crash and lightning 1 stroke,
When Pele raised her voice and spoke
Through Kilauea,
Over the wastes where Terror rode,
Vast streams of red hot lava flowed,
Until the molten deluge fell
And made the sea a hissing hell.
Now yawning pits of burning fame
Mark the throats whence lava came,
And Pele s voice has spread the name
On Kilauea.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Edward Winterer.
38
PAGAN PATTERNS.
ITHE TEETH OF LONO.
High in the pagan quiet
Of Olomana peak,
The pale Hawaiian opals
With milky voices speak,
"We are the teeth of Lono,
"The broken teeth of Lonp,"
The bleeding agates speak.
High on the barren summit,
Where anguished lava runs
In knots and whorls of passion,
They count the wheel of suns
For the return of Lono.
The coming back of Lono
Is measured off in suns.
II HEIAU NIGHT.
Crouching in the heiau . . . ,
0, the things we said !
While the mountain rain came pouring,
And the valley wind went roaring,
And the sullen thunder rumbled
Overhead.
Crouching in the heiau ....
0, the night we spent!
While dry groves of hau kept squeaking,
And the pale kukuis creaking,
Till we thought the shades of Milu
Filled our tent.
Crouching in the heiau ....
O, the things we heard !
Drum-like throbbing, bell-like tolling
Boulders down the stream bed rolling :
Sweet at dawn to hear the chatter
Of a bird.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Fred E. Truman.
39
OAHU HILLS.
The red hills of Oahu,
Like a beacon out to sea
Far they glow and gleam and beckon,
They are calling me.
The red hills of Oahu,
Bare and high and proud they stand,
Like the proud and glowing banners
Of a happy land.
And when my life is over
It s there that I would lie,
On some bare hill of that island,
In the evening sky.
So if some day you miss me
You will know that I have gone
To the red hills of Oahu
In the flame of dawn.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Clifford Gessler.
ODE AT THE WINTER SOLSTICE.
Now when the slow sun hesitates to turn
The vast curve of the immemorial quern
Of distant stars against the winter sky,
And in these man-made streets men imitate
The rush of comets of celestial spate,
Let us lay off the ponderous cares of state
And wend our way again to Lau Yee Chai
To watch the steaming noodles marching by.
What profits us to know that the earth spins
Through timeless space ? That like the cast off-skins
Of monstrous reptiles, many a folkless star
Dark and unheeded hurtles down the steep
Abyss of night? That untold millions sleep
Whose dust is ours, whose dreams are ours to keep.
Come with me then, and let grave thoughts be far
The while we slip the fragrant steaming cha.
40
"Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and sage, and heard much argument . . ."
But now I enter where the friendly grin
That shines upon the Oriental face
Of Chong, warms all the chopstick-littered place,
And where a Voice resounds, with matchless grace
And eloquence we d give a lot to win :
"Buk shap yee !
"Chow wan tun ;
"Chow gai si min!"
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Clifford F. Gessler.
BE THANKFUL.
If only I had eyes to see
My circumstances in life,
Where I was spared adversity
Where danger too was rife ;
Yet unaware went on my way
Without concern or care,
Would I not still give thanks today
For what escaped me there.
If only I had ears to hear
My widowed Mother s prayer
Above her brood with love and fear
Lest ill betide us there,
Would I not listen long awhile
In gratitude alway
To learn the secret of her smile
When came Thanksgiving day.
If only I had time to weigh
The good there is about
And follow every sun-kissed ray
Since heaven sent it out,
Clothing the fields around the earth
To nurture man well say
Who would not bow before such worth
And give some thanks today.
The H-arbor Springs Republican. Charles A, Heath.
41
TWO CHORDS.
I FROZEN Music.
One came at dawn, distraught with half -remembered
sorrows,
And laid a burning head against the cold, unyielding
stone of my dark breast,
And whimpered like a little child :
"Why should I wake upon a night of great winds
wailing
To feel the patter of swift pigmy feet,
Like long disturbing ripples racing down the surface
of a moon-enchanted pool,
Drum down upon me with old discontents and deep
despairs,
And beat me down with all the old misgivings ?"
But I was coaxing icy-footed songs from iron strings
And pouring vials of frozen music on the flaming altars
of my heart. . . .
His eyes grew large, as crystals formed of dew, when
they are dropped upon a polished glass ;
And as the tinkling wine fell drop by drop,
Congealing into bleeding jewels hard and cold,
A startled cry escaped those lips . . .
He dashed his head against the cold, unyielding stone
of my dark breast,
And as he fell I saw fear-ridden thoughts flow, like a
muddy stream,
From caverns where old dreams were wailing. . . .
While on its surface bleeding jewels hard and cold
Floated away colliding in the temple s gloom
And tinkling . . . frozen music.
II DISMAL Music.
And now you come to me,
Singing moon-muted melodies of love,
That, with insistent knuckles, clamor at my heart.
And I, suspicious of the immemorial maid,
Sing my harsh song to drown your lovely songs,
And dream how those sweet, lightly pouting lips
Have killed love in the past with cruel words,
And wonder if your songs and love are lip deep only.
42
I see in every girlish gesture a potential lie,
And thru the rhythm of each melody,
I feel an icy wind, where calculating eddies whirl
Down dark, unsounded, subterranean streams;
While somewhere, in a dismal cavern, a great heart
Throbs dully, without resonance or tone.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Fred E. Truman.
HOUSE-CLEANING.
The spring is coming on again
And I must tidy more
The large and little bureau drawers
And shelves behind the door.
And make the windows shine again,
And hang clean curtains white
And wax the floors and rub the chairs
For seeing eyes delight.
While I am working I will feel
How glad this heart of mine
That Spring is coming on apace
By will of God divine.
And Nature s house will soon be sweet
With blossoms everywhere
And I ll be free to go and come
And all this beauty share.
The Hartford Times. Florence Van Fleet Lyman.
SWEET MUSIC.
Some think the music of a city symphony
By a famous orchestra is sweet,
Some love the hum of a reel so free,
Others think that jazz is a treat.
But along about now as I roam through the fields,
And the fragrance of the woods is sweet incense,
The sweetest music that Ma Nature yields.
Is the Bob White whistling on the old rail fence.
The Ithaca Journal-News. Phil Armstrong.
43
WADING.
Leaf-boats rocking on the tide,
Ripples dancing at her side;
Wavelets racing hand-in-hand,
Velvet toes and velvet sand
Wading, wading in the stream,
Fonder, higher in the shine
On her limbs the water-line
Little girl, what does she dream!
Water of a thousand springs,
Music of a thousand strings ;
Breezes pressing back the heat,
Minnows nibbling at her feet ;
Wading in the cool brook-mere,
Fingers dipping at the skies,
Blue of heaven in her eyes,
Lotus and her Eden near.
The Indianapolis Sunday Star. Lynas Clyde Seal.
LITTLE COVES.
Dear little coves, as meek as brides,
That fret the shore like turquoise beads,
And twice a day, for fickle tides,
Are widows in your weeds;
Dear little coves, that fill and drain
Alternately, at work or play,
Harvesting silver-headed grain
Or blue translucent hay
How often have you come and gone,
To spread the riches of the deep
Upon your shallow plates, and drawn
Hill-waters to your keep ?
How often have you ebbed and flowed,
Like terminable hearts of time
Like mine, for all its prosy load
Throbbing eternal rhyme ?
The Jacksonville Journal. John Kearns.
44
ANCIENT MARSHES.
Come . . . bend back the bright wand willow
. . . gently! Thrust aside
the weeds and grasses . . . gently !
Part the hanging mosses slowly,
gently, gently . . . lest you fright the reed birds,
lest you warn the heron,
fently, lest the red flamingo
ame into the burning sunlight.
Spirit of most ancient eras,
Spirit of these brooding marsh lands :
forgive . . . for my footsteps here are lawless foot
steps
in these wild, unchanging marshes !
Gently . . . straighten again the silver willows
. . . bend them back ! . . . Unchanging Spirit :
The Earth is young, I feel her calling.
Carefully fix the weeds and grasses,
softly drop the hanging mosses . . . softly!
. . . softly . . . lest my soul, the red flamingo
wheels in fright from out these marshes.
Ancient Mother : changing, changeless
receive again thy olden lover,
Time is a shadow . . . the Earth is young !
1 am the red flamingo !
The Houston Chronicle. F. A. Dewson.
INVERSION.
Death
is a stooped old man
scooping up
the rubbish
that litters
a park.
Life
is a park.
The Jewish Tribune. Henry Kane.
45
HOME.
Where is your home?
Why friend o mine,
The home, from which, in pain you part,
Whose Queen
I ween,
Is she you deem almost divine
Is in your heart !
What makes the home,
My thoughtful friend?
You know your longings as you roam,
In dreams
Each seems
To draw you where affections tend :
Love makes the home !
What blesses home
Your fond desire?
Tis mutual trust that is the price !
One stone
Alone
Will not suffice, there needs be pyre
Of sacrifice.
The Hollywood Citizen. Frederick M. Steele.
INNUENDO.
I stood alone to watch.
The blue-grey hounds of twilight snapped
At the heels of fleeting light.
My lips were still ; Yet,
I spoke to the crimson streamers
Of a dying day.
All men have their fancies ;
Their true Gods, and their
Broken idols.
The mighty Zeus is dust in a ruined temple,
And Mithra slumbers in a broken hull in
The blue bay of Salamis.
The blue-eyed Gods of Valhalla are no more,
And Balder, the Beautiful, is dead
Our broken idols
46
Men looked to them for immortality,
And piled high their shrines with hopes ; dreams
Then came the winds that blew across the fields of
time.
People legends Gods myths
And when shall the hand of time draw the mists
Around us, and robe us in the storied past ?
The dreamer of the unborn years shall view
Our ruined temples, and rude winds shall
Disturb our dust
The Jeivish Tribune. Marion King.
THE DIFFERENCE.
We are so different, you, dear, and I ;
A tree s just a tree to you . . . sky, just sky.
Even the colors mean nothing to you ;
Red is plain red to you . . . Blue is plain blue.
For me red spells glory, passion, fire.
The flare of a sunset, the wine of desire.
And blue spells courage and strength and truth . . .
The breath of the heavens, the eyes of youth.
The Jeivish Tribune. Julia Lois Cahn.
THE ETERNAL JEW.
The cynic time and all his myrmidons,
Swift-rolling, unperturbed, ironic years ;
Arising at the dawn of stars and suns,
To reign till cosmic broil their record blears,
Have witnessed through their" countless Argus-eyes
Upon the highways of a restive earth,
A weary pilgrim under alien skies
Pursued by foreign scorn and bitter dearth.
A scourged, derided slave in Cheop s reign,
In Babylon a prisoner in cuffs,
A tenant in the dungeons of Spain,
A tortured victim of the Romanoffs.
The ages summons : "Wanderer you are due,
All yield to us and must we yield to you ?"
The Jewish Tribune. Simon Mayer.
47
TO NATHAN STRAUS
On His 8oth Birthday.
(January 31, 1928.)
What shall we bring thee on this festive day
When costly gifts of exquisite design
And workmanship and texture shall be thine?
We offer thee no incense from Cathay,
Nor ivory from Hind, nor Ophir s gold,
The quest of keen adventurers of old ;
No silken rug from Samarkand shall greet
Thy ravished eye, resplendent at thy feet ;
Nor in the cadence of the English tongue
Shall glory and the praise of thee be sung ;
Our gift and greeting shall be but a prayer :
Shalom, Shalom, God give thee plenteous peace,
Thy precious life two decades more increase
And keep thee in His everlasting care !
The Jewish Tribune. George Alexander Kohut.
I READ MY POEMS.
I read my poems to the sea
And the waves leaped high in sight of me.
I read my poems to the wind
And on and on then sped the wind.
I read my poems to the trees,
The gentle, patient, lovely trees.
I read my poems to the rocks,
The steadfast, sturdy, silent rocks.
I could not tell for the life of me
If passing wind or leaping sea,
Or silent rocks, or patient trees,
Or any one, or all of these,
Responded to the words I read;
But I noticed with some inward dread,
That the waves still leaped, the wind still sped,
Long after I had ceased to read,
Long after I had ceased to read.
48
But I read my poems to my love,
At the sunset hour, in the self -same place,
And caught the light that comes from above
In the shining light of her pleasing face.
The winds grew calm, the rocks looked up,
The trees whispered in the loving-cup,
The waves leaped high, the waves leaped higher,
And she drew nigh, and she drew nigher,
When I read my poems to my love
And caught the light that comes from above.
The Kentucky Kernel. H. H. Fuson.
AWARENESS.
There was a time when I was unaware,
And had no conscious thought of time or space,
And never knew of beauty, song or grace,
Nor did I hope in vain, or feel despair,
And never sensed the light or breathed the air,
When all at once a miracle took place,
And I awoke the image of His face,
With power of thought to reach Him with my prayer.
Whatever course His wisdom s planned for me,
On land, in air, or on the briny deep,
I will accept my lot with constancy,
And never falter, shun, nor sigh or weep,
But be content with His divine decree
Of everlasting life, or endless sleep.
The Kansas City Times. Henry Polk Lowenstein.
MORNING.
Grey dawn, mystical and chill . . .
Shafts of light stabbing the sky
Behind curtains of red and amber.
The Earth in travail . . .
A luminous Eye of burnished gold
Peeps over the horizon.
A new day is born.
The Kansas City Times. Henry Polk Lowenstein.
49
FALLEN IDOLS.
From gods of old we made our choice
For laughter and love and art,
You, Beloved, with song and faith,
And I, with a reckless heart.
For both had more than Youth requires
To worship its gods apart.
Then spoke the sage a worldly man
"Young hearts would ever arrange
The scattered hills, the slipping tides,
And all that is new and strange.
Yet Youth is brief, its dreams depart,
And Life will abide the change."
Then you, Beloved, you stormed at him,
Such lies had ever been told.
Our love was fixed, for all he said
"It would die while the heart was bold."
And Time could never change our gods,
For worship alone grew cold.
The dreams we dreamed are old and dim,
The cynic years rejoice
Since I, Beloved, swore naught was true
But the sound of your silver voice,
Since, one by one, we saw them fall
Idols of youth and choice!
The Kansas City Star. Lowe W. Wren.
THE OLD ORCHARD.
When, fairy-like, the blossoms fall,
And heavy wings the bee,
Nothing matters but I should sprawl
Under an orchard tree.
Here, year by year, the birds come back,
Their quest more true than mine.
Yet ever a wandering heart will lack
The blessings of a shrine.
50
And distance lends, year after year,
A magic bloom to youth,
With Time depicting the picture clear
As only he paints the truth.
When apple, cherry, plum and peach
Stood rooted and confined,
And ever my journey s utmost reach
Turned back to the love they shrined.
Reason enough why I should sprawl
Under an orchard tree
When, fairy-like, the blossoms fall,
And heavy wings the bee.
The Kansas City Star. Lowe W . Wren.
NOW.
Desert and ocean, mountain and plain,
Little they matter when staked against gain.
For what are the fortunes of compass and clime
When man can but harvest one crop at a time !
April comes tripping from Winter s cold clasp
And her skies burn golden to earth in our grasp,
Yet for all that it matters, by office or plow
Man lives on the things Life offers him now.
Blue eyes and black eyes, the brown or the grey,
Color s no matter when Love blinds the way.
Tomorrow s for visions of hope and despair;
Today has the glint of the sun in her hair.
Ships are long coming and storms ride the seas ;
Tonight is more servile, who sits at her knees.
Alluring the promise, though fervent the vow
A man likes the lips that are offered him now.
Summer and winter, springtime or fall,
So little it matters, the old town hall
Would never know Monday from Saturday night
Were it not for a rally, a dance or a fight.
Stalwart, old structure, proudly aloof,
Yet much like a human when put to the proof,
Patient and aging, nor troubles his brow
But takes of the things Life offers him now.
The Kansas City Star. Lowe W. Wren.
51
THE SMELL O MOTHER S BREAD.
There s the fragrance o the lily and the perfume o the
rose,
And the smell o 1 honeysuckle makes yer want ter sniff
yer nose,
But there s not the smell o one o* them, when every
thing is said,
Can compare with mother s kitchen after she s been
bakin bread.
When I ve ben out a hoin and the sun a shinin hot
And I come in glum and weary, discontented with my
lot,
Then like droopin flowers are refreshed by showers
from overhead,
Is my weary spirit freshened by the smell o mother s
bread.
And my laggin footsteps quicken as I hear the dinner
call,
Smiling then I say to mother, "It s a good world after
all!"
And I know the only reason that to this conclusion led,
Was the smell o ? mother s kitchen after she d been
bakin bread.
The Kansas City Star. Flora Brownlee Walker.
PATH TO PEACE.
Out neath the pines where the ferns and leaves are
spread ;
Out neath the sky where the blue and grey are mixed ;
That s where a soul finds its peace and happiness,
After a day when distrust and doubt were wed.
Who could break faith, when the blue shows through
the grey?
Who could know strife, when the pines breathe,
"strength and peace ?"
Sunshine comes through (in a life that s sad and blue)
Out where a path leads to Love, and marks the way.
The Lewiston Sun. Elsia Thomas Shillings.
52
STRUCTURE WORKERS.
They are gigantic, those great girders, swinging
So deftly, so securely into place,
While they who move them are so small, and clinging
So perilous, upon the framework s face!
And floor by floor, the splendid building rising,
To their important labor does attest ;
These, with dexterity and strength surprising,
Raising the structure skyward with a zest.
Then, if death strikes, a slight attention
Is given to the builder, if he fall ;
A paragraph, perhaps, the papers mention,
Another takes his place, and that is all.
So when we see the giant girders, swinging
All swiftly, and so surely into place,
Just breathe a prayer for those, so small and clinging
So perilous, upon the framework face !
The Labor Advocate. Ethel Knapp Behrman.
IN MEMORIAM.
There s a shrine in my heart
That is sacred to you
only you.
Tho we ve long been apart,
Still I miss you it s true
really true.
In your dear pictured face
I find solace, you see
do you see?
And my tears leave a trace
On the lines you 1 wrote me
just to me.
Now there s joy and there s sweet lilting laughter,
There s music that s gay
oh, so gay!
But love that s once given, lasts forever and after
Tho you ve gone away
far away.
The Lewiston Evening Journal. Lillian W. Pelletier.
S3
SPRING NIGHT.
Frogs a singin* in the swamp,
Balm Gilead on the breeze,
A little shiny quarter moon
Showin thro the trees.
Everything so sweet an new,
Trustin like an fair,
Seems like Heaven ain t fur off
An worship s in the air.
The Lewiston Sun. Susan Stinchfield Williams.
LITTLE STOCKINGS IN A ROW.
By the glowing Christmas fireside,
In the vanished years ago,
I was filling little stockings,
As they hung there in a row.
One was stored with boyish treasures,
From the next one peeped a doll,
And the third sock, oh so tiny,
Was the dearest one of all !
Now beside the Christmas fireside,
With the embers burning low,
Comes today that sweetest picture
Of the stockings in a row.
Happy mothers with your children,
Count each precious moment gold,
While the little ones are sheltered
Safe from harm within the fold.
Thankful be and prize the blessing
Of the joyous Christmas glow,
When you fill with loving pleasure
Little stockings in a row.
The Lewiston Evening Journal.
Alma Pendexter Hayden.
54
MOON MAGIC
Last evening I saw an island,
With shimmering silver strand
It lay on the darkened river
Like a bit of fairyland.
The bridge from shore to the island
Was a moonbeam s slender span ;
Beneath it the swirling current
Of the cold, dark river ran.
The roofs and the soaring turrets
And the walls of gleaming stone
Of a castle out of dreamland
In the sliding moonrays shone.
But twas only moonbeam magic ;
To-day, in the morning light,
No trace remains of the island
Or the castle seen last night !
The Lewiston Evening Journal. Blanche A. Sawyer.
I SHALL GO HOME.
I shall go home some distant day at twilight,
Unknowing and unknown where strangers dwell,
To watch once more the sunset from the orchard,
To sip the cooling water of the well ;
To dream again the dreams I thought forgotten,
When springtime paths wound far beyond the hills.
To find the nesting orioles, and hearken
The mocking echoes of the whippoorwills.
And I shall feel the old place has remembered
(Though I myself forgot for many days,)
That it will welcome me in tones familiar,
Though voiceless these, with dear enduring ways ;
Then I shall rest awhile and muse at even,
For a brief space before the day is done,
I shall go home oh, may my steps not falter
Before the road that leads me there is won !
The Los Angeles Times. Mabel W. Phillips.
55
THE OLD WILLOW TREES.
(The other day on the top of Walker Hill, Wilton, the
I/uman H. Gould family felt it necessary to chop down the fine
old willow trees that for more than a century had graced the
driveway to their hospitable home, on account of their de
cadent condition.)
So they felled the fine old willows
That a hundred years or more
Had waved a gracious welcome
To callers at your door,
And said "Good-by" when going
From your charming farm abode
And somehow gripped the heart of all
Who passed along that road ;
They sang or whistled sweetly
As winds blew strong or low
Through every season of the year
How sad to see them go!
They sheltered little folks at play,
And weary folks at rest <
For birds, men, animals alike
They always did their best !
And now that axe has laid them low,
These fine old willow trees ;
And all who knew them best are sad
And on their bended knees
Send up a prayer to God above,
And this is whctf they say:
"Dear Lord, like these old willow trees,
When I must pass away
May folks who will remember me
Feel sad to see me go,
But glad that I, like these old trees
Was faithful while below."
The Lewiston Journal. Rev. William Wood.
BEARGRASS CREEK.
The trees are looking up the stream,
Theyt think that spring comes down that way.
And who can say it is a dream?
That trees know nothing, who can say?
I ve often seen the filmy veil
That spring wears caught on willow trees
56
Across a meadow. Without fail,
Spring s fragrance, wafted on the breeze,
Tells of her coming long before
I hear her whispering at my door.
The violet buttons of her shoes
Lie on the grass in threes and twos.
The trees are watching and they seem
To know that spring comes down the stream.
The Louisville Courier- Journal. Kalfus Kurtz Gusling.
THE UNKNOWN REPORTER.
Jim Keene was a reporter on the Trib,
Who didn t get a by-line once a year,
But there never passed a day when he didn t peg away
At some lines which brought some other fellow
cheer.
He wrote the piece that built a home for orphans,
He helped to win the teachers better pay,
And, though nobody knew, he was just the fellow who
Got the facts which brought the gunman s gang to
bay.
Wherever there was pestilence or strife
Jim went beside the doctor or the cop.
He wasn t any beauty and he never bragged of duty,
But there couldn t any danger make him stop.
He wrote the stuff that brought the milk for babies,
He wrote the truth which brought a despot down
Though another got the credit it was Jim first sensed
and said it,
And then proved it, and set free the whole blamed
town.
So when people talk about the Unknown Soldier
And proudly pay deserved respect to him,
Though I hear the rat- tat- tat of machine guns, and all
that,
Something somehow always makes me think of Jim
With his rat-tat-tat-tat-tatty old typewriter,
Fighting* battles for mankind each day and all
Yes, by golly! While there s Jim and ten thousand
more like him,
This old world is pretty safe, though heavens fall!
The Los Angeles Times. Lee Shippey.
57
THE BAD LITTLE BOY.
He took his mother s scissors, which he knows he
musn t touch,
And went into the garden, where he knows he
mustn t go,
And cut off all the lily buds we d counted on so much
(They would have bloomed for Christmas and set all
the house aglow.)
And so, of course, we spanked his hands and sent him
off to bed
With angry looks and scoldings (we so much mis
understood)
But when we saw him lying there asleep, tear-stained
and red,
We loved him just as achingly as if he had been good.
He seized upon the mixing bowl when mother s back
was turned
And poured out on the kitchen floor what was to be
dessert ;
He stood wide-eyed and wondering while words about
him burned,
And then we spanked his hands again yes, truly,
till it hurt.
We stood him in a corner till he sobbed his heart in two
(One twisting sticky finger tugging at his curly head)
And then we asked him sternly very sternly if he
knew
The reason. "Why, for helpin muwer do her
work," he said.
Oh, but he s bad, so very bad he keeps us in a fret !
He climbs on chairs to get at things and makes a lot
of muss.
He breaks a law a minute sometimes two or three
and yet
When we look at him sleeping something stabs the
hearts of us.
He is so close to fairyland he cannot help but stray,
Misled by elfin fancies, though with high romantic
aim.
We feel as may our Father of our greater sins, and say :
"Strange visions may mislead him . . . but we Jove
him, all the same."
The Los Angeles Times. Lee Shippey.
58
AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES.
Out from the tunnel s mouth the runner flashes
A gleam of white on darkened cinder track.
Acclaim and catcalls are like lead-tipped lashes
His spirit bears to victory or the rack.
Quick thoughts like prayers surge within his brain :
u The game s the thing. That fellow s form is good.
Winning or losing there must be no stain
To smirch my record. God, if I but could
Win, win for Alma Mater and the boys !"
Sturdy, yet graceful, as a silver hake,
He warms up slowly; silently he joys
In feeling fit. The runners quickly take
Their places. "On your marks. Get set." . . . He
grins
Lightheartedly . . . One mighty lunge ... He
wins I
The Los Angeles Saturday Night. Annice Calland.
THANKSGIVING.
What is Thanksgiving to you?
A football game or cranberry sauce,
An ancient custom, covered with moss,
What is Thanksgiving to you?
No more than a holiday
On which you lazily lie abed,
Only arise so you may be fed,
Or a bit of bridge to play?
Is not Thanksgiving for all
You and the "kids" and "hubby" and wife
To pause in thanks for a happy life,
Remembering well that fall.
About three hundred years ago,
When stalwart hearts in a country wild
Saw that the sun and earth had smiled,
Defying the coming snow?
What is Thanksgiving to you?
The Milwaukee Journal. Lindsay Hoben.
59
SLIPPERY PLACES.
Waiting for the mail
Has always been a favorite pastime
In country towns.
The ones who get the least mail
Spend the most time waiting for it.
It used to be that way in Weston
Where the mail came by stage.
The crowd always gathered there
Not only to get the mail
But to see who "come on the stage."
One spring day the street
Was a perfect glare of ice.
It had rained for a day
Until the roads were rivers
And .then it had turned cold.
Frank Love joy was picking his way
From his cutter
To the store steps.
The usual crowd was waiting for
The stage to come in with the mail.
Frank had almost made the steps
When his feet flew out
And he sat down on the ice.
Rev. Higgins was just coming up
And finding Frank wasn t hurt,
He said to him in his most unctuous manner :
"Brother Love joy, the wicked stand
In slippery places P
Frank looked up at him from his seat
On the ice.
"Yes, I see they do, Parson,
But I don t see how in time they do it."
The Manchester Journal. Walter A. Hard.
WIND S.
We catch the whisper, sense the gentle breeze,
Take comfort in its coolness on the brow,
And delve in learning to discover how
And whence it comes and where beyond those trees
It drifts into the breathless noon-day calm.
We follow it on multi-colored maps
Across the plains to snowy mountain caps,
60
And hear it wake the forest-fir-trees psalm.
It curls majestic in cyclonic form
With fiery forked disaster in its train,
Wild rivers, floods and devastating rains,
The vast uncharted madness of a storm.
Oh, breezes bearing voices of the sky,
You chant of God uncomprehended nigh !
The Milwaukee Sentinel. Sam Bryan.
WAITING.
Waiting Simply waiting for the Master s final call ;
To face the last tribunal, before the judge of all ;
And render strict accounting of my stewardship while
here ;
Cheerful and complaisant, without one qualm of fear.
I m waiting, simply waiting.
Waiting Simply waiting for the final scene to close,
When I shall lay Life s burden down and rest in sweet
repose ;
Rest from strife and turmoil, seeking peace of soul ;
Waiting for the bell to ring when I have made the
goal.
I m waiting, simply waiting.
Waiting Simply waiting for the Reaper stern and
grim;
Waiting for the harvest to be ripened well for him;
My dreams of life are over, my earthly work near
done ;
And with pleasure and enjoyment I watch the setting
sun.
I m waiting, simply waiting.
Waiting Simply waiting as the clouds go rolling by,
Basking in the sunshine beneath an azure sky;
The sunshine soon will vanish, the sky be overcast,
And night will draw the curtain, and darkness come
at last.
I m waiting, simply waiting.
The Mill Valley Record. W. G. Bratton.
61
ARMISTICE DAY.
Not call to arms, but call to peace,
The day that bade the carnage cease,
This is the day we celebrate.
Once rang war bugles, far and near
In every section of our land.
Today they ring out, loud and clear
Urging our youth to understand
That civic courage ranks as high
As that which led men forth to die,
Although those men we all hold dear.
Armistice, ending war and hate,
This is the day we celebrate.
The Mill Valley Record. Margo.
THE ROSARY.
Each woman has a rosary,
She "tells" it in her dreams,
Seeing life s jewelled moments
Of joy in flashing gleams.
But-times she takes the chaplet up,
And touches the hard cross,
And all the joy of all her life
Is outweighed by a loss.
It may be that a noble son
Has died in bloody war,
Or that a loved daughter
Has gently gone before.
She clasps the cross quite humbly,
She dares not let it go,
Altho the waves of anguish
Engulf her as they flow.
The cycle of her dreaming mind
Brings round the cross of pain,
But now, a holy law has changed
Apparent loss to gain.
For, by the mystic alchemy
Of a surrendered soul
She sees her joy and pain atoned
In a transcendent Whole.
The Mill Valley Record. Joan Woodward.
62
LONGING.
Out from the tenement s highest row,
Out from the broken and toppling blind
I peer and whisper: I love you so
Pray, come tonight on the summer wind
Out from the throng of the angels there,
Come to the maiden you used to know,
With the lovely form and the wonderful hair;
And a heart that thrills to the long ago.
They say I am old and will soon be there;
Each day is an age while I wait for you
Cheat fate a little and take me away
Where the seeming is real and the false is true.
Gather me swift from the form I wear,
Our hearts will in deathless love entwine,
Fulfill the edict of long ago
That made me yours, as you are mine.
The Mobile Register. Millie C. Pomeroy.
ONE WALKS IN LITTLE SEMINOLE.
Lift, swing, of a ponderous arm to grip
Darkly into old earth s long-nested dream.
Tautly the rope, this way, that . . . then drip,
Drip, drip, of a slow disgorging stream . . .
Gold.
Black hates by artifice of common need
String on the fringe of chance a common creed.
Flag-lashed derricks planted against the sky
Men s hearts at the roots of them . . . the gnawing cry
Of hunger to bring forth children . . . Flags ! lift high
For the earth is yielding ! In engines drive and throb
The trumpet of dead hopes ; its vision always to be
Flag-lashed to their derricks; hosannas out of their
sob . . .
Each in his own hope finding dare he but see ...
God.
The Muskogee Phoenix. Hala Jean Hammond.
63
AUNT SHAW S PET JUG.
Now there was Uncle Elnathan Shaw,
Most regular man you ever saw !
Just half -past four in the afternoon
He d start and whistle that old jig tune,
Take the big blue jug from the but ry shelf
And trot down cellar, to draw himself
Old cider enough to last him through
The Winter ev nin . Two quarts would do,
Just as regular as half-past four
Come round, he d tackle that cellar door,
As he had for thutty years or more.
And as regular, too, as he took that jug
Aunt Shaw would yap through her old crow mug,
"Now, Nathan, for goodness sake, take care,
You allus trip on the second stair;
It seems as though you were just possessed
To break that jug. It s the very best
There is in town and you know it, too.
And twas left to me by my great-aunt Sue.
For goodness sake, why don t yer lug
A tin dish down, for ye ll break that jug."
Allus the same, suh, for thutty years.
Allus the same old twits and jeers
Slammed for the nineteenth thousand time
And still we wonder, my friend, at crime,
But Nathan took it meek s a pup
And the worst he said was, "Please shut up.
You know what the Good Book says befell
The pitcher that went to the old-time well."
Wai, whether twas that or his time had come
Or his old stiff limbs got weak and numb
Or whether his nerves at last giv in
To Aunt Shaw s everlasting chin
One day he slipped on that second stair,
Whirled around and grabbed at the empty air,
And clean to the foot of them stairs, kersmacked,
He bumped on the bulge of his humped up back
And he d hardly finished the final bump
When old Aunt Shaw she giv a jump
And screamed downstairs as mad s as bug
"Dod-rot your hide, did ye break my jug?"
Poor Uncle Nathan lay there flat,
Knocked in the shape of an old cocked hat,
64
But he rubbed his legs, brushed off the dirt,
And found after all that he warn t much hurt,
And he d saved the jug, for his last wild thought
Had been of that; he might have caught
At the cellar shelves and saved his fall,
But he kept his hands on the jug through all,
And now as he loosed his jealous hug
His wife just screamed, "Did you break my jug?"
Not a single word for his poor old bones,
Not a word when she heard his awful groans,
But the blamed old hard-shelled turtle just
Wanted to know if that jug was bust.
Old Uncle Nathan he let on roar
And he shook his fist at the cellar door;
"Did ye break my jug?" she was yellin still;
"No, darn your pelt, but I swow I will."
And you d thought that the house was a-goin j to fall
When the old jug smashed on the cellar wall.
The New Canaan Advertiser. Holeman Day.
MOTHER.
"She traveled the journey before you,
She has known all the cost of the way;
She paid out the price to its fullness,
That motherhood only can pay.
She loved when the world was against you,
She hoped when your hope sank and died;
She clung to your hand when the clinging
Left scars in her heart, deep and wide.
She labored and loved and was happy,
For down in her kind heart, she knew
Your kindness and love would repay her,
For all that she did just for you."
The New Canaan Advertiser. H. G. Benedict.
65
CASTLES IN SPAIN.
On clouds born of sunshine and roses
I dwell in an endless domain,
Whose portal of Hope never closes,
And dreams hold a magical reign ;
Where springtime forever is gilding
The turrets which rise o er the plain
The dreamland of constant upbuilding
Of castles our castles in Spain.
I built the most wondrous of castles,
Whose gardens of perfume I fain
Would plunder of joys as my vassals,
To people my castle in Spain.
And Friendship and Trust were my pages,
To sing the celestial refrain
Of kindness and truth which through ages
Dwell only in castles in Spain.
And oft in my chariot of fancy
I soar from these haunts in disdain,
To conjure by sweet necromancy
A surcease of trials mundane;
To rest in my castle s seclusion,
In peace with my vassals to reign,
And bask in this land of illusion
My castle, my castle in Spain.
But now my great castle is crumbled,
Its ramparts I guarded in vain ;
The fervor of youth has been humbled;
My vassals and pages are slain.
Oh, Youth with ideals a-teeming,
Oh, Age with thy waking and pain ;
The dreams which we dream, in the dreaming
Are castles, mere castles in Spain !
The New Canaan Advertiser. Herman A. Heydt.
HABITUDE.
Men were amazed an unaccustomed lad
Could put on fame with grace and wear it so
Without conceit, not cognizant he had
Worn greatness daily, without swagger show.
The New York Evening Post.
Ruth Evelyn Henderson.
66
THE CATHEDRAL.
Seed-born, God-strewn, of arbor ed stateliness,
The vast Cathedral, umbraged deep, overspreads
The Universe. Within its chapel groined,
All mankind rest and cooling shelter finds
And eke repose of body and of mind.
The ceaseless vespers, voiced by tongues unseen,
Addressed to sylvan altars of the air,
Float through the woodland tense with sacred awe,
And press upon the deep, vast silences
The spirit of Omnipotence divine.
Its lofty columns, shaped of pine or spruce,
Or of the native woods in varied climes,
Support the myriad foliated spires
Which skyward point their adoration.
The aisles,
Of carpet laid in moss of countless years,
Thrill with the power of the Presence mute,
And speak of kinship firm twixt God and man;
As an Aeolian harp of dulcet tone,
The wind, subdued to solemn, reverend breath,
Reveals the Spirit in each trembling leaf
Which humbly nods its prayerful response.
Forth from the censer of the woodland s flow rs
Waft soothingly the perfume of the glade
Which brings to mundane frets a calm surcease,
And wakens in the solitude profound
A sense of simple love and homage mute.
Long through the dismal vigil of the night
The owl-sexton hoots his faithful call
And harks the orisons of winged elves,
Who flit in spectral train.
And when the Alchemist
Transforms Heav n s drab to morning s burnished
gleams,
The dewdrops, pendant from each leafy bough,
Reflect with prism glow the zenith s flush,
Which filters through the vibrant, pulsing dome
Like to some multi-colored window screen,
And tesselates the floor, mosaic gold.
The choir, neath the Baton s sway divine,
Sings forth its praise in diapason pure,
And echoes soft from out the tendrilled vault
In voices of untutored harmony.
67
The swallow, thrush and wren of northern apse,
Make common cause with all the denizens
Of East and West in all the universe,
Who seek within the naves a refuge safe
Amid their chorus of droned monody.
Anon, a rivulet, exultant, trills
O er pebbles glazed and smoothed by wild embrace
Of roaring torrents which in aeons past
Had shaped and fixed their present boundary;
And then a pool, in silent calm, reflects
In placid pose the glory of the scene,
While from a hidden lecturn-bough resounds
The sermon chanted by some warbler sweet,
. Which echoes through the wooded transcepts with
The warmth of love and life.
In raiments bright,
The flitting insects wing their message brief
Of life s swift, short and transitory flight,
And symbolize our evanescent joys.
Behold now man, who sacrilegious bent,
Invades the Godborn sanctuary s calm,
And desecrates its realm with murd rous aim.
And as the shadows slowly, stealthily creep
From tree to tree, the calm of peace descends
Upon the sacred, solemn edifice.
And nature rests, for God s Cathedral is
The forest, vast, eternal.
The New Canaan Advertiser. Herman A. Heydt.
ACROSS THE YEARS.
When Christmas comes again with star-dewed skies
And earth is blanketed with gleaming snow
I hear the glad Hosannas softly ring
Across the years, from that long, long ago.
I see again, on Mary s lovely face
The dream and benediction of that hour
When prophecy fulfilled, the Christ should come
To meet the cross and try its cruel power.
And when I think of that rude manger where
The little Christ-child lay his kingly head
I marvel at this gracious gift of gifts
Which through the years has healed and comforted !
The New Dominion. Elizabeth Davis Richards.
68
DREAMING DREAMS OF YOU.
I thought I knew how I would feel
If you should go away;
I knew that I would miss you, dear,
All through the night and day ;
But oh, I never once had guessed
That, all I d want to do,
* Would be to live with yesterday,
Just dreaming dreams of you.
I thought that I could still live on
And meet life with a smile ;
I knew I d try to do the things
I felt you deemed worth while ;
But there is nothing I enjoy
Or seem to want to do,
Save just to know I m dreaming, dear,
The sweetest dreams of you,
The New Democrat. Ruth Markley Buchannan.
CERTAIN HOMELY GIRLS.
On rainy days Nature is cross ;
And when she feels forlorn,
It seems to me those are the days
When homely girls are born.
She fails to twist their hair in curls;
Or flashen up their eyes.
She fumbles with her lines and curves
And jumbles up her dyes.
But that devil-may-care called Love,
When he sees a misfit,
He chuckles up his crimson sleeves,
And sprinkles her with ... IT ...
The New York Evening Graphic.
Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni.
69
IF.
If I kissed you at dawn
You would awaken in surprise.
If I kissed you at noon
You would whisper:
"I love you."
If I kissed you at dusk
You would sob:
"Don t leave me"
But ...
If I do not kiss you . . .
You will remember me ...
The New York Evening Graphic.
Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni.
BEN JONSON, JR.
Love brushed my eyes one golden day
And blinded them with glory;
Heigh ho! thought I, I ll write a lay
And tell all men my story!
No line of it was written then,
And none until the morrow;
Alack-a-day! I dipped my pen
In gall and bitter sorrow.
The New York Evening Post. Wilfred J. Funk.
FROM A HILLTOP.
There is a wisdom in the love of earth;
There is a friendship in the valley s hand.
Say what you will of books and their fine worth,
They have no value till we understand.
The tree s huge labor breaking through the soil,
The silence of this hill against the sky,
The plow that furrows and the seedling s toil,
The awful quiet in which oak trees die.
They have no value till we sense the surge
Of rivers put beneath a forest bed,
Of sun and wind and rain whose lives must urge
The flower s breath, the apple s green to red!
The New York Times. Bert Cooksley.
70
MOTIF.
I shall remember glowing things, but none so bright
as this,
A scarlet rose against a bank of mist-blown clematis.
I shall remember quiet things, but none will be more
cool
Than wind on watercresses, growing by a pool.
I shall remember weary days, but none will be so long
As a day that died with weeping that had been born
with song.
I shall remember dreadful things, but none worse than
the sound
Of a small bird singing, to the thud of falling ground.
The New York Times. Catherine Cate Coblentz.
SALUTE!
Sixty years from Gettysburg and sixty days from God !
Oh, all the flags are flying in the street !
The limping remnant passes by with wistful smile and
nod,
For some leather-lunged young orator to greet.
But we have seen their passing and we want no windy
words ;
Their presence is a sacrament today.
The flash from off their buttons of the glint of golden
birds
Is more eloquent than all that men can say.
Sixty years from Gettysburg and sixty days from God !
We lift our hats in token of respect,
And though next year may see us putting roses on
their sod,
Today, we here salute them . . . The Elect!
The New York Times. E. Leslie Spaulding.
71
SILHOUETTE.
Of course, I thought I d never let him stay,
But, anyhow, I d save him from the street
And dreadful woes that might befall a cat
,So very small and wabbly on his feet.
He was a kitten black as licorice
From spiky tail to wee, shoe-button nose.
His eyes were blackish gray, and dark as soot
Were all the cushions underneath his toes.
I d bought him from an urchin for a dime,
And, for another dime, when day grew dim,
I d buy a vial of chloroform, I thought,
And put a swift but gentle end to him;
Or send him to a shelter for stray cats
This might be kinder. Then I looked, and, oh,
He made the quaintest little silhouette
Against the kitchen surbase, white as snow!
A week before I d seen some silhouettes
Bring forth, at auction, bids absurdly high,
And these weren t soft and cuddly and alive ;
These couldn t give a white- toothed, pink-mouthed
cry!
And so, I thought I d name him "Silhouette,"
But call him "Silly," almost all the time,
For silhouettes are quite the rage just now
And one can t often buy one for a dime!
The New York Times. Violet Alleyn Storey.
THE GYPSY FROM GALWAY.
Oh, I have heard it s very rare
To find a gypsy lass that s fair!
They re swarthy and their eyes are dark,
Their hair is brown as chestnut bark,
But early morning yesterday
A gypsy came across my way
With hair like silver touched with fire
Above her green and white attire.
That she was gypsy I was sure
With eyes delphinium-demure.
72
And when I said, "It isn t right
That any gypsy be so light!"
She answered, "Oh, the little folk
Forevermore must have their joke;
And when in Galway I was born,
My mother broke the bloom of thorn
And spilled its sacred, welling sap
Before she took her noonday nap!
So while in thoughtlessness she slept,
The broken thorn lay there and wept
Until the little folk all flew
To stop its wound, with much ado*!
And seeing me, they touched my feet
With drops they caught, to make me fleet;
And as they touched my eyes, there thinned
Before my sight the paths of wind!
And when their humor grew more bold,
They touched my hair, and it was gold.
But then I saw my mother start,
Because they touched my very heart!"
And when her uttered words were still
I was alone upon the hill.
I could not trust my eyes, and vow
I don t believe it happened now!
But just the same, I will not break
The sweet-starred hawthorn sprays to take!
The New York Times. Sonia Ruthele Novak.
RICHES.
The coins of autumn
Fall upon the earth
Sun-minted gold,
And copper pieces thrown.
The ground is a miser
Gathering the worth
Of leaves the spendthrift
Winds have spent and blown.
I walk upon this wealth,
Rich as a king
Coins for my dreams,
And songs the heart must sing.
The New York Sun. Helen Maring.
73
THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL.
The crystal pool, in shadowed symmetry,
Reflects the Grecian beauty of a shrine
A grateful nation built in memory
Of one who loved all men ; whose blood, like wine,
Was spilled in sacrifice. He followed stern
And martial paths ; his life was marred with tears,
Yet is a fitting symbol for this urn
Of classic grace.
Though slowly-certain years,
Exerting their inexorable might,
Shall use the marble as they used the man;
And lichens dull the alabastar-white
Till it is dark as a wind-whipped caravan ;
Within the heart a temple strong and vast
Defies time s gnawing power that crumbles stone !
Fame s leaves may wither in the fickle blast
Of adulation . . . love, and love alone
Remembers like a sudden storm at noon
Those whom the jfealous gods call home too soon.
The New York Times. Louise Crenshaw Ray.
WINDS AND WATERS.
Give me a wind through the tree tops roaring.
I love quiet, but after death,
Far and far though my soul goes soaring,
This spent body will draw no breath.
Give me the tumble of foaming water.
I love peace, but the moments fly,
Swift, so swift I may not have caught her,
Ease of My Heart before I die.
Give me the high and the hot endeavor.
I love dreams, but I cannot stay.
Little I have to pledge forever,
A fleeting hour in a fleeting day.
Give me the road my feet may follow.
I love rest ; when the quest is done,
One look back over height and hollow,
Purple and gold in the setting sun.
The New York Times. Lewis Worthington Smith.
74
BARE LEGS.
Farewell sheer hose that held me breathless lest
A sudden run should ruin your perfect mold.
For now my limbs shall strut forth grandly cool
And pass unhalting shops where hose are sold.
And I shall save the coins that once I spent
In new creations fashioned to allure . . .
But what I save ... I fear that soon will go
To the first shop that starts a "Leg-i-cure."
The New York World. Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni.
THE INTOLERANTS.
They have placed our God on a great white throne
In the city that s built of gold,
While the earth-mother pleads for a crust of bread
And the child of the slums is cold.
His angels play on their golden harps
Unmoved by a human sigh
The fruit on the trees of the garden of God
Lie waste while the warstricken die.
Parched are the lips on the Afric strand;
On the sullen Egyptian shore,
While the millions of China shall ask of Him
For a mouthful of rice no more !
Yet they say that the River of Life is free ;
Its banks are evergreen,
And there s never a tear, save the tear that falls
From the eye of the Nazarene.
All undefiled are the robes they wear
Where only a few may go,
While festering lies the Indian vales
And crimson the Russian snow.
They ve placed Him safe and have placed Him far
Where the nightless seasons roll
Far away from the wail of the weary slave
And the cry of the sinsick soul.
But God s grown weary of harps, He says
And the shores of the tideless sea-
He longs for the streets where humanity weeps
And the fishers of Galilee.
75
They may place Him safe, and may place Him far
As they like, but He will not stay.
Blood-drenched the great white throne of the land ;
The cup of His fury is red in His hand
And they know and they fear His day.
The Nonpartisan Leader. . Flora Cameron Burr.
SEA BURIAL.
The engines stopped. Then suddenly
They gave the body to the sea.
No sound, save quicker pulse and blood
As canvas glided over wood.
One moment tense and still as death
That made each witness hold his breath.
And then that far-off heavy sound
As grey-green waters closed around
This cold and stiffened bit of loam,
So silent, and so far from home. -
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. John Richard Moreland.
THE SNOB.
She knew a lord : "I met him once, my dear,
In London/ and her eyes shone at the thought;
"And Baron So-and-So, a dashing peer."
A young lieutenant whose grandfather fought
At Flodden Field had led her out to dance.
She had a button that adorned a king,
A ribbon from a Chevalier of France
Gossip to last you through an evening.
Her name sweet fashion s charities has graced,
Yet sick and beggared passed her unaware ;
No poor relation ever could have faced
Her jewelled lorgnon with its brittle stare.
Now she is dead she greets Christ with a nod,
He was a carpenter, but she knows God.
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. Virginia McCormick.
76
THOUGHTS.
Before my eyelids curve in silver rest,
My thoughts, like sparrows harbored warm and deep,
Ruffle their feathers, preen their dusky breast,
Then put their heads beneath their wings and sleep.
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. John Richard Moreland.
A DESIRE.
If life holds much for me that s good,
Then give me strength to bear it ;
And if for me it holds a crown,
Then may I wisely wear it.
For there is nothing quite so sad
As man endowed with treasure
Whose strength is so inadequate
He sinks beneath its pressure.
The Oakland Tribune. Elna Forsell Pawson.
GYPSY FIRES.
Children of Egypt; before Saul,
Ever afield in brier and leaf,
Halt caravan as shadows fall,
On strange or friendly fief.
The freemen of the wand ring foot
Take breath, make caravansarai,
Neath budding bough, by twisting root,
Tween a green carpet and blue sky.
In manner deft, the Romanies
Set up their flares, and kindling fires
Cast lurking, eerie witcheries
On fragrant clumps and trees like spires.
The gammer, the tribe s seeress, croons,
In sleepy voice, each chi, each maid,
Dream-wrapt, with heavy lids, communes ;
A-muse in firelight and shade.
Two roms their age-old fiddles bow,
To a slow noctrune; a black sea
Of shadows rustles; night winds blow
For sleeping ryes in glade and lea.
The Oakland Tribune. Alex R. Schmidt.
77
JOHNNIE-JUMP-UPS.
We climbed the hill, where fern-lined trail
Wound to an open meadow
Ah, never was so green a vale
In sunlight or in shadow!
The yellow fairies met our sight
Such joyous little faces !
The Johnnie-jump-ups sprang o er night
To deck the sun- warmed spaces.
Tho close to Nature s breast they grow,
These darlings of the rill-time,
No gorgeous blooms in stately row
Could thus reward our hill-climb.
We kneeled down on the pulsing sod,
And tempted were to kiss them,
And as we gathered, prayed that God
Would surely never miss them.
The Oakland Tribune. Bessie L Sloan.
LIPSTICK.
And, it is all written with lipstick, sealed and signed.
Blood is the pigment of life and youth
And lipstick is the color of blood ;
Our race is losing its life and youth
And resorts to tinting instead of the truth.
The Oakland Tribune. Greta Larsdottir.
MOODS.
Rain and wind and a frowning sky,
A soul depressed am I ;
Sun and zephyr and smiling sky,
A soul inspired am I.
The Oakland Tribune. Alice Gertrude Pogue.
78
OPALS.
I love all the tints in the Western sky,
At the close of a warm, clear day;
When the sun goes West to its well-earned rest,
And the Moon and the Stars hold sway.
For the flaming red and the softer blue,
And the hues on the white clouds high,
Makes a pathway bright for the feet of Night,
Creeping onward through the sky.
Though the Artist strives with a cunning brush
To imprison the sunset grand,
And his work is fair all the glory there
Is out of the reach of man!
But God hid the sunset and all of its hues
In the heart of a gleaming gem,
And all of man s art can never impart
The beatity he gave to them.
For into the Opal he poured the clouds,
Drifting white in the Western skies,
And the colors bright of the God of Light,
The blue of a baby s eyes !
So art has rebelled at the Master s skill,
And jealously called it taboo,
Till the man is rare that will choose to wear
This gem of a sunset hue.
And we who _ would wear it despite the ban,
Risking ruin for its colors bright,
Chance the bitter smart of misfortune s dart,
For the prisoned rays of light.
Yet we cast defi at the artist-clan,
While we scoff at their voodoo great,
For we wear the gem as we laugh at them,
And fly in the face of Fate !
The Oakland Tribune. Rauol Dorsay.
79
"REMINISCENCE."
I saw a face that wind and sun had tanned.
A pair of twinkling eyes, where lovelight beamed,
I felt the firm warm pressure of his hand,
He kissed my cheek, a kiss, so real, it seemed
That I lived in the past I had but dreamed.
The Oakland Tribune. Gertrude Schroder.
RETROSPECT.
There was a time we stood upon a wind-blown cliff
And looked on fields of golden tasselled corn,
And watched the day and night in fond embrace
While pale white shafts of light brought us the dawn.
There was a time we drifted quietly down a stream
Beneath a canopy of star-jewelled skies
And in the hush I heard a night-bird s plaintive cry
And saw your love reflected in your eyes.
There was a time when life and things semed cruel
to me,
When sorrow came and we two had to part,
But you came back at dusk with rose-filled arms
And sobbed yourself to sleep upon my heart.
The Oakland Tribune. Greta Elliot.
TRAIL MAGIC.
Oh, come little maid with the great brown eyes,
Come out on the trail with me.
And lay aside your pout and tears
For laughter and melody.
For out on the trail where the wind blows free
We are brother and sister to bird and bee
Oh, there s wonderful things in the world to see
If your heart s in tune.
So, come take my hand as we trudge along
And your heart will be light and gay,
As it pours out its joy in a happy song
While we wander the livelong day.
80
For out on the trail we are free to dream
From the dawn of the day to the sun s last beam
And our thoughts run wild on a grander theme
In the month o June !
The Oakland Tribune. Rauol Dor say.
SHIPS.
A gray ship on the skyline
A seal upon a rock;
A tug that breasts the waters,
A tanker at the dock
And O, the evening shadows
That wriggle on the stream,
A black pipe and a pier end,
A sunset and a dream !
Away from streets and store-fronts,
Away from paint and glass,
Where beauty is unvarnished
And sailing ships may pass.
Gray wood and gray smoke,
And gray the swirling foam,
And a speck upon the sunset
Is a ship a-sailing home!
The Oakland Tribune. Addison B. Schusfct
THE GROUCH.
An unkind word oft sent him to the garden,
And there he walked, picking his way along
The foot-worn path, but stopping now and then
To let a toad pass . . . for a cricket s song.
With dewy cool still clinging to his clothes
He d slink into the house, out of the gloom
Where star-mists hid the deep hurt in his eyes
Seeking the stuffy quiet of his room.
The Oakland Tribune. Lela Glaze.
81
"TAKE UP OUR QUARREL WITH THE FOE."
Take up the quarrel, young manhood;
Press on with heart to win.
Disease and want confront us,
Grim foes without, within.
Go over the top!
Fight poverty, fight baseness,
Fight ignorance and greed ;
All foes of human welfare
Oppose with word and deed.
Go over the top!
Take up the quarrel. Dauntless
Demand that wars shall cease.
Fight all that makes for warfare ;
Aid all that augurs peace.
On ! Over the top !
The Oakland Tribune. Laura Bell Everett.
WILD ROSE AND MYRRH.
The prairie ocean rolled away
To the rim of a turquoise bowl.
Windspun perfume on waves of heat
Aspired to a cloud-fleeced goal.
Three great black silent butterflies
Toiled, fluttering, in the field.
Behold the passing farmfolk said
The Sisters cut their yield.
One tossed the hay upon the rack,
One drove the gentle team ;
One reared a prairie pyramid
Against a wooden beam.
Their starched white wimples, closely bound,
Lay limp on dampened cheeks;
Athwart wide-streaming woolen veils
Perched hats with rain-warped peaks.
Blue gingham aprons could not hide
The swaying chains of beads,
Whose quick click-click was antiphone
To larksong from the meads.
82
The youngest nun kin to the rose
That flecked the greensward sea
Wrought symmetries of flashing tines,
Like silver-shot green frieze.
She knelt to free her flowing hem
From clinging briar-thorn.
Like this, mayhap, the Virgin s robes
Trailed fresh-strewn hay one morn.
Then smiled the little cloister maid
With reverence in her eyes,
As flashed a scene from far-off days
And distant Eastern skies.
Dear Sisters, they were women, too,
And such as we she said
Who gleaned sweet grass from sunlit plains
To line the manger bed.
The Oakland Tribune. Minnie Faegre Kno.v.
THE MAGDALENA RIVER.
Oh, the Magdalena River, I have seen it in my dreams,
With its current sliding smoothly through the jungle,
greeny gray,
With the wind upon its bosom making little crinkly
seams,
And the waving palms above it where the howling
monkeys stay.
There are green lianas drooping, there are parrots
flashing through
The trees above the water where the river dolphins
play;
Giant butterflies go floating like flakes of sapphire blue,
On the Magdalena River far away, and far away.
Oh, the eerie tropic twilight when the mists are drift
ing down,
Oh, the fireflies weaving dances like a band of gypsy
stars,
While the crocodiles go drifting like logs of muddy
brown
To catch some fish for supper on the sandy river
bars.
83
Oh, the red flamingoes winging like streaks of living
flame
To catch the rosy brightness of the glory of the
dawn,
Oh, the ever changing jungle that is everywhere the
same,
Oh, the silent, steamy river when the tropic day
comes on.
Surely there, if anywhere, must be the home of true
romance,
And I often think that maybe some far day,
Til have to go and see it if I ever get the chance,
The Magdalena River, far away, and far away.
The Oklahoman. Kenneth C. Kaufman.
CALDRON.
Into the caldron of copper night
Where dreams may bubble and reel,
I have poured my life s delight;
The moon is of turquoise and steel.
Into the caldron I put your name,
More flavor to star-salted brew,
And out of the caldron of copper night
Rose vaporous visions of you.
The Oregon Sunday Journal. Helen Maring.
JUST BECAUSE.
Why do we love when we do not know
If the love that we give comes back?
Why do we cherish mere mortals so ;
All unmindful of what they lack ?
Why do we find in a humble face
All the beauty of sunset sky?
Heaven is found in the crudest place
If the heart has its love, but why?
Why do we serve with a tireless zeal,
And rejoice if we gain a smile?
Why do we dare to express what we feel,
When it seems to be least worth while ?
84
Why do we hope for a glad return
Of the fire that has thrilled us thro ?
Why do we pray and believe, and yearn?
It is only because we do !
The Philo-Duncan Falls News. Helen Smales.
DANDELIONS IN THE SUN.
Dandelions in the sun,
Golden dollars every one;
Let us pick them and go buy
All the sea and all the sky.
Dandelions in the sun,
Golden dollars every one
Who can be as rich as we
Buying sky and hill and sea!
The Portland Spectator. Annette Wynne.
FROM ANNIVERSARY ODE.
(The University of Oregon.)
Time, never-resting, unwearied,
Gathers his pack to be gone,
Checking our rash exultations,
Driving our blind feet on;
Time, unperturbed and impartial,
Shall draw twixt the just and the ill,
And men are but pawns in his wallet
And move by the turn of his will.
The Portland Spectator. Mary Lowell Rebec.
THE BLESSING.
God bless each room, the great and small,
And bless the silvery pane
Thy blessed sunlight glimmers thru*
E er starlight comes again.
God bless the warmth and bless the board,
Bless every loved football.
Bless love of peace, Thy peace on earth,
Thy blessing upon all.
The Portland Spectator. June MacMillan Ordway.
85
WIND S LULLABY.
The wind leaned over the little house
And sang to it very low
Of how the birds tuck in their heads,
When off to sleep they go.
He sang of crimson petals curled,
Of white wings folded in sleep,
And drowsy-hearted blades of grass
All tumbled in a heap.
The wind crooned to the little house,
Forgotten his clamor and shout,
Till one by one the winking lights
That were its eyes went out.
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Rebecca Helman.
UNDAUNTED.
Love spreads gold strings across the hearts of men,
While life presents, to each, a silver bow ;
Then whispers, "Play for me, O anxious child,
The melodies you fain would have me know. 35
Some play, but lose the sweetness of their tones
Indifferent souls, who do not seem to care ;
While others, with rare tenderness, express
In chords exquisite all the beauties there.
But love is won, and all the world is stilled,
And even angels cease, it seems, to sing,
When, rising high above life s dark despair,
A broken heart plays softly on one string.
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Charles Bancroft.
SONG OF THE IRISH SEA.
O, the Irish Sea is a man s sea,
And I doubt which I love best ;
The waves that race through the Channel,
Or those I meet in the West,
For the Irish Sea is a rough sea,
When the tides are running high ;
86
But the Irish Sea is my sea,
When the winds go sweeping by.
O, the Irish Sea is a wild sea
For those with a boat to sail,
It s steady hands that must pilot
A ship through an Irish gale.
For there s joy untold when you re holding
The prow to the salted spray;
And peace in your heart at twilight,
When you re safe in Galway Bay.
O, the Irish Sea is a calm sea,
When the winds have ceased to blow ;
With a turquoise sky above you,
And the emerald waves below.
With the love of a colleen waiting,
As you climb upon the quay
Faith; God put a charm in Ireland
But He took it from the sea.
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Charles Bancroft.
ROADS.
Some roads are jolly fellows,
Happy-go-lucky sports;
Travelling on the level,
Barely out of sorts.
Others are contrary
As any old mare
That limps to the hilltop
To turn about and stare.
One ogles beauty
And calls itself a lane,
Another wears asphalt,
Unquestionably sane.
Last comes the lone road,
Latticed to the sky;
The narrow, winding footroad
We, one by one, must try.
The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
Anne M. Robinson.
87
AT MASS.
My little golden rosary lies within my purse,
Beside a coin, some ear-rings and a bill.
And while I sit and stand and kneel,
I see
My wee one in her bed at home,
A dream of loveliness that day when, holding
out her baby arms
To me, she caught the glint of golden beads
that twined my hand
There by chance that moment.
She took them, curious; fingered them; crept
along the Aves, caught
By larger gleam of Paters; paying casual heed
to neat, small cross,
Till with obvious thought of necklace she
bent her head and tried to slip it through.
Too small a circle, the Rosary simply lay against
her hair,
The Salve just between her eyes, the tracery of
chain tickling her nose
And making her laugh; the little golden pen
dulum of cross coming to rest against
her lips.
Ah, if some day instead of touch, she feels the weight
of gold
And wondering, seeks to find a dying body swaying
on her lips ;
And to her nostrils not rose- fragrances of consumma
tion s prayers,
But stench of flesh and sickly smell of new-spilled,
thorn-provoked blood ;
And in her ears begins the quiet, never-ceasing beat,
"I thirst!"
Oh, Mary Mother !
May I have fashioned feet that leap to ladders then
John s ladders, made of wood from Olivet
Give her hand strength to squeeze the gall from Tar
tar s sponge,
And other Mary, join your voice to mine,
And sing with me a song to rival wine !
The Providence Journal. Mary Butler Dursin.
88
VALENTINE DAY.
Yesterday was Valentine s:
I had a lot o fun !
Got ten funny ones at school
An guessed em, ev ry one !
After supper, when twas dark,
So s nobody ud see,
I sneaked upstairs an got the one
I bought for Mary Lee.
Gee ! twas pretty big red heart,
Sayin "I love you"
With lace an cupids round the edge,
(Cost a quarter, too!)
I jes walked soft across the street,
Tiptoed up the stair,
An peeked in through the parlor blind
Ter see that she was there.
Then I quick pulled the bell an run
An hid out in the yard,
An when I heard the door unlatch
I listened pretty hard.
She said: "Oh, my!" an giggled soft
An closed the door an then
I waited just a little while
An tiptoed home again.
She never said a word today,
But when school most was through,
She turned right round and smiled at me
Oh, boy ! I bet she knew !
The Providence Journal. Dorothy C. Allen.
THE LAST TOAST.
Life ! Love 1 Drain to the dregs
Deep from a heart that knows
Love for all, with never
A thought for friends nor foes
But the blessing of God, Who shows
Love to us all, where er one goes
With His blessed Peace at the close.
The Portland Spectator. A. MacM aster.
89
LONELY, HOMING, ALL ALONE COMING
HOME TO YOU.
Lonely, homing, all alone
Whither will I fly?
Over wastes of moonlit sea
Wand ring till I die,
Seeking homes where we have nested
Under starlit sky?
Shall I find no friendly haven,
Port of love s desire?
Shall I sink beneath the waters
When my pinions tire,
Or will gentle zephyrs bear me
Ever upward, ever higher?
Lonely, homing, all alone,
Through the trackless blue
Mounting higher, ever higher
In my homing true,
Ever seeking you, my loved one,
Coming home to you.
The Pittsburgh Observer. Marie Tello Phillips.
A DAY IN MY GARDEN.
Dawn in my garden ! Silver dew is glistening
Along the path where down my eager feet have
found their way.
And in that wondrous moment stand I, listening
To the veery in the forest, throbbing forth his early
lay.
Tender buds that through the night were dreaming,
Open wide their petals now to greet the morning ray.
Athwart the garden closes with sudden radiance
streaming,
The sun rides up in splendor, bringing back the wel
comed day.
90
Noon in my garden. Scarlet poppies bending,
Yellow butterflies sail slowly through the perfume-
laden air.
In the elm tree swinging, the oriole is sending
Notes of springtime, love time, all along the valley
there.
Throughout the sunny noonday the honey bee is keep
ing
Tryst within the lovely throats of all the flowers fair.
Among the apple blossoms the soft south wind is creep
ing,
There is music, laughter, motion, color, pleasure in
my garden everywhere.
It is evening in my garden now ! Across the woodland
calling,
The hermit thrush is singing his holy vesper bell.
The silken blossom petals are falling falling falling,
My long day s work is ended and I whisper "All is
well."
Again the stars shine brightly in the far blue heights
above me
The hermit s song is hushed at length, the garden s
world seems still.
While I lift my grateful soul with thanks for joy at
hearts that love me.
When hark! a goodnight greeting falls, I hear the
whippoorwill.
L ENVOI.
O, my lovely garden ! How my heart wells full with
rapture.
Tender memories, present blessings, future joys lie
here in thee ;
Memories of long vanished springtimes, the coming
days recapture
Cherished promises and golden dreams of the sum
mers yet to be.
The Rutland Herald. Jane S. Butler.
91
A GIRL LIKE YOU.
It s the faith of a little girl like you
That counts when the world goes wrong,
When a fellow s down and mighty blue
And his lips can voice no song.
When the loneliness seems hard to bear
And the scheme of life proves tame
It s knowing somehow* that still you care
That makes a fellow game.
When he wants to quit in the first long mile,
Turn back in the grilling race ;
When the goal beyond seems not worth while,
And he balks at the speedy pace,
It s then that the faith of a girl like you
Makes him reckon the coward s cost,
And he plays to win as a man should do
The game he might have lost.
It s girls like you that keep him straight,
Keep him white clear through and clean.
It s girls like you that make men great
And not what they might have been.
Oh ! it s good for the man, when all seems night ;
When the clouds hide the goal from view,
Just to knuckle down and fight, yes, fight,
For the sake of a girl like you.
The Rutland Herald. Ozias Gauthier.
EMBERS.
Sometimes, when silver moonbeams ride the azure
evening sky,
Perhaps I ll wander down those time-worn paths where
you and I
Together walked in radiant dreams,
And lived and loved beneath those beams,
And built our fairy castles in the glorious heavens high.
A haunting strain of melody from song of long ago,
The fragrance of a dew-swept rose, Ah, dear! I
loved you so
The vesper sparrow s golden throat
Calls to my heart with plaintive note
And bids me to a tryst with you in haunts we used to
know.
92
A moon-drenched glade and shadows soft; a touch
upon my arm.
Your wind-tossed hair against my cheek Hearts beat
ing love s alarm
A surging rush of passion s flame,
A kiss too sweet for any name
We found there in our first love-dream life s dearest,
sweetest charm.
An eager question, and a pledge, and Life met face to
face.
Brave, clinging hands; hot tears suppressed Fare
well ! A last embrace.
A whispered prayer Twill ever be,
"Oh, God ! keep watch tween thee and me."
A kiss; a smile and then we part to enter in life s
race.
The rose has crumbled to an ash and blown its fleeting
way.
Warm in the ashes of that dream an ember burns to
day.
An ember burns to lure me back
Along that ancient, time-worn track
Will-o -the-Wisp of happiness I seek and want alway.
The Rutland Herald. Frank F. Rogers.
MY GOLD STAR FLAG.
There s a star in the window, for you, my son.
It s gold on a pillow of white.
Around the edge, like a ribbon of red,
Runs courage, insignia of might.
Love, courage, might, faith and loyalty, too,
Are the five points that edge round the star ;
While faith, hope and love and the prayers of my heart
Are with you, wherever you are.
Sometimes it s the face of my baby I see
Or a boyish face radiant with joy.
It s not the star that shines in my flag ;
To me it s the face of my boy.
The Rutland Daily Herald. Mrs. S. McNulty.
93
THE ELECT LADY.
Even in death will she not be
As other women are :
Her soul in yon great arc will shine
Like some transcendent star!
Her blood will change to rubies red,
Her tears to pearls be turned
And clouds above the likeness take
For which our eyes have yearned !
Her eyes will glow in sapphires blue
Her hair be all of gold ;
Her smile will clothe the daffodil
When winter waxes old !
From her dear grave the violets
Will have their birth in Spring ;
And with the voice we knew and loved
The nightingales will sing!
The Rutland Herald. Arthur Goodenough.
THE LOST ROAD.
The city s din s about me,
The city s sights I see,
But my mind is a trav ling
Into the country free.
For to Vermont s green forests
My truant thoughts will flee,
And I m led along a wood road,
A little mountain wood road,
That runs beside a trout brook,
Where my boy fished with me.
In my hand is a letter
From my pal of that day,
Telling of frightful flood loss,
That poor Vermont must pay.
"And Dad," he writes, "our wood road s
Entirely washed away.
Nothing is left of our wood road.
Our birch-lined, mountain wood road,
Running beside our trout brook,
Nothing but boulders gray/
94
A flush of shame is rising,
That my heart should be sad,
Over a washed-out wood road,
When some lost all they had,
Cattle and homes and kindred,
It makes me seem a cad.
But I can t forget my wood road,
That little washed out wood road,
That s no more by the trout brook,
Where I fished with my lad.
What can I do to help you,
Vermonters, proud and stern,
Bereft of homes and kindred,
Knowing not where to turn ?
I ll send a check to aid you :
A friend s help you ll not spurn,
But will you rebuild my wood road,
My little mountain wood road,
That ran beside the trout brook?
If so, my thanks you ll earn.
The Rutland Daily Herald. Katherine S. Smith.
HILL TOWNS.
If you love a hill town,
You greet each beckoning light
That marks a pathway of friendliness
Against the sky at night.
And when the little lanterns
Have vanished in the day,
You watch the tinted shadows,
That change and shift in play.
If you have left a hill town,
You never can forget
The clouds that tangle in the trees
And leave the branches wet.
Your heart will long for hill towns,
That climb to reach the sky,
And neighbor with the friendly stars,
That wheel in silence by!
The Sacramento Union. Eunice Mitchell Lehmer.
95
NOSTALGIA.
I m longing now for Yorkshire and the path across the
moor
That leads by silent waters, beneath a quiet sky,
That winds through purple heather to a dark and
rough-hewn door
Beneath a thatch in Yorkshire, where curlews call and
cry.
For there is peace in Yorkshire among the lonely hills,
And healing in the solitude and grace the crags among.
The bracken fronds caress you beside the shining rills,
And there is blessing in the rain that falls at evensong.
There in the dusk in Yorkshire, when all the moors en
tice,
Go trooping past the wraiths of those whose ardent
blood spilled there:
Roman and Scot and Druid, and maiden sacrifice
Lo ! on your cheek in Yorkshire you feel their floating
hair.
And as the moon wears westward, just as they did of
yore,
They fight their ancient feuds again with club and
arrowhead ;
And as the daylight filters upon the dewy moor
You see them flitting onward, if you are Yorkshire-
bred.
The Salt Lake Tribune. Maud Chcgwidden.
PENDRAGON LANE.
Pendragon Lane, Pendragon Lane, your name sings in
my heart,
Though you and I are continents and weary years apart ;
For never daisies grew so fair, so rosy-tipped and tall
As on the sloping edge of you, beside your old grey
wall;
And nowhere else were buttercups so yellow or so
bright
As those the little children plucked there, shouting
with delight.
96
I wonder if the heather is as purple as of yore
(Oh purple Yorkshire heather) on the heath you
straggled o er;
And if the peewit wheels above, and grouse go whir
ring by,
And if the sturdy moor-sheep stand etched against the
sky.
Oh, you were such a lazy lane and never seemed to
care
If e er you reached the hilltop, or what lay over there.
And when the moon has risen, Pendragon Lane, above,
Do they come forth there two by two, half whispering
of love,
With here a lass s laughter, and there a gentle sigh,
As hand in hand they pace the lane that leads up to
the sky?
I hear them now, across the years, and wonder wist
fully
If harvest moon can bring such love as once it
brought to me !
The Salt Lake Tribune. Maud Chegwidden.
SEGO LILY,
(It is a fact of history that in the early days the sego lily
bulb was used as an article of food by the Utah pioneers.)
A ghostly flower, you wave amid the gloom,
Your velvet white against the gray of sage.
Dreaming, I drive an ox or olden stage,
And with worn pioneers I see you bloom.
For them you saved from gaunt Starvation s doom ;
They learned your loveliness could well assuage
Both soul and body in that desert age
Those men who journeyed West for food and room.
Your lily manna to that valiant train
Gave life in famine time, so they could found
A noble state . . . And now, oh argent queen
Of all the mountain flowers, your brown-red stain
Is but the symbol of a fleshly wound,
As through the dusk I glimpse your silver sheen.
The Salt Lake Tribune. Jessie Miller Robinson.
97
POINT OF VIEW.
Three cedar trees, old dowagers,
Bonneted in green,
Corseted and dignified
In rusty bombazine,
Gossiped of their younger days
When maiden trees were prim
And would not dare to turn their heads
To please a breeze s whim,
Criticized a slender birch
With prude severity,
Who pirouetted in the sun
Where proper folk could see
Her slim, bare ankles flashing white
And, disapproving, note
That she was dressed in taffeta
Without a petticoat.
Three scarlet maples up the hill,
Soubrettes with carmined lips,
Dressed in spangled tarlatan,
Roughed their finger tips,
Gossiped of their gayeties,
Shook their hennaed hair,
Wondered if a Puritan
Were living anywhere
Who wore a somber dress and cloak
With silver-buckled shoes,
And who could never do the things
That actresses would choose ;
Then one espied the slim young birch
And said in swift surprise:
* I do believe a Puritan
Is right before our eyes !"
The San Antonio Evening News. Hascl Harper Harris.
GJOA TO AMUNDSEN.
(The Gjoa, the craft in which Captain Amundsen made
the Northwest Passage, is now in Golden Gate Park, at the
ocean beach.)
Winged Winds of the North-
Winds from the world s white rim
Out where the lamps of the stars
Hang low and their lights are dim,
98
Tell me What of my Captain
Fearless Viking of Storms
What has become of him?
Once I was free as you
Upon the nights that stun,
And felt the sharp, white teeth of ice,
The spears of sleet and hail.
And the slashing swords of the rain,
But against the dauntless will of one,
How could these prevail ?
Now from my deck the sparrows fly,
My masts are bare as a stringless harp.
Except for you, O Winds,
Only the ghosts of the sea come nigh.
Again, I call to you !
Winds from the world s white rim,
Where is Amundsen
Viking of Storms
What has become of him?
The San Francisco Examiner. John G. Jury.
AS OF OLD.
Slow winds are wandering the low hills today
Scented with perfume of fairy faced flowers ;
Long thoughts I m thinking of vales far away,
Where with you, darling, I passed golden hours,
Hours that forever Fll hold as a part
Of the rapture-glad dreams enshrined in my heart.
Though my world s beautiful, sunny, serene,
With flower and bird song and spring verdure set,
Still I am longing for heart s dearest queen,
And days like those gone we can never forget.
But love, before long we shall know the old bliss,
You ll lie in my arms and return kiss for kiss.
The Santa Rosa Republican. Oscar H. Roesncr
99
THE SINGERS PASS.
In Mewioriam to Ina Coolbrith.
The singers pass :
And all our monuments and graven stones
And lyric brass
That keep remembrance of their vanished tones
Are but the dr apings of our selfish grief.
They are not dead who sung the golden strains ;
For in the music of each wind-kissed leaf
The deathless wonder of their song remains,
And every dawn
Is but an image of the lips we knew
That have withdrawn
To some infinity we cannot view ;
Where death s unclouded vision has revealed
The thing eternal that is here concealed.
The singers pass :
But in the chapel of our silent days
With solemn mass
We pay our tribute to their years of praise.
The singers pass, and now we give farewell
To her who kept the fires of faith with song.
Perhaps beside another Bay there dwell
The joyous masters that with her belong,
And as they roam,
They toast the empire of unending spring
That was their home:
But in what tongue or world or shape they sing,
We know their timeless chorus shall rejoice
To greet again the magic of her voice.
The San Francisco Examiner. Aha Romanes.
HUNTER S ADVICE.
Deer hunting season in our hills
Comes crisply in November,
And brings each year exciting thrills
For Nimrods to remember.
For as I pussyfoot the trail,
(Wild deer one does not trot at!)
There s hardly one whole day I fail
To get my own self shot at.
100
A sneeze attacks me oh, what luck!
Impossible to stifle !
I m taken for a snorting buck,
And "bang" goes some boob s rifle.
Perhaps I use a turkey call,
(You know, of course, what that is !)
It s sure to bring a rifle ball
Ka-zizzing where my hat is !
The deer escape, but I, alas,
Come home all perforated,
Because some over-anxious ass
Shot when he should have waited.
I wonder if this little rule
Would maybe cause improvement?
It s plain enough for any fool :
Don t shoot at noise or movement.
When hunting deer (and life s like that),
It s always best, I figger,
To know just what you re shooting at
Or else not pull the trigger.
The Santa Fe New Mexican. S. Omar Barker.
ENTREATY.
Never believe me when I say I do not love you
And never wish to see your face again;
Never believe me when I say that you are cruel,
I mean that you are much too gentle then.
Do not, my dear, believe the hasty words I utter
Or take to heart my mockery and jeers;
I only say these things to keep my throat from closing
Upon the salty bitterness of tears.
Do not, I pray you, turn and answer me with coldness
Then in disgust open the door and go :
I want you to close me in your arms and kiss me
kiss me !
. . . But you are just a man. . . . How can you
know?
The Springfield Union and Republican.
Rebecca Helman.
101
PENDULUM.
The same emotions hold a beat
Within each human clock.
Time starts the pendulum to swing
And none is solid rock
Love swings the pendulum a while,
Or ecstasy or woe . . .
A tick-tock of eternity,
And it is time to go.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Helen Maring.
AN OLD SIOUX IN COURT.
(Apparently he was quite downcast, yet there was the
gleam of old fire the free, careless fire of a thousand
years burning- in his eye as he faced the judge from the
mourners bench.)
He flung some glimpses of his ancestry
Warriors and chieftains of Dakotaland,
Dark, fearless braves and squaws of clever hand
Had ranged before his era valiantly.
U A plain drunk," his assessment ran,
He of the proud and unflinching Sioux,
A town-snared victim of unholy brew,
A yipping coyote no, a fighting man.
Boiled in his veins the blood of prairie kings,
Stormed in his heart old scalp-dance memories.
Slipped from his tongue the trail-spun rhapsodies,
And where his mocassins had been as wings.
But now he passes for ten huddled days
To that grim tepee with the grating key.
Great Spirit! look away and do not see
This drama of the white boozemakers ways.
The Sioux City Journal. Will Chamberlain.
PAPOOSE.
(I met them, by chance, in a cafe two buxom Yank-
tonaise, Sioux squaws, one middle aged 1 , the other young,
and a very fat papoose. He or she, was so swaddled in a
vast flaming shawl that I conjectured the fatness from his
plump, droopy, cracker-sprinkled cheeks.)
Little muskrat blackberry eyes
Peeping out in wild surprise,
From the red shawl s screeny cover.
Is it your sister or your mother,
102
Papoose, coddling you.
After the Star cafe stew
And soup bowls and pie?
No, no, now don t cry,
I ll not tap your cheek any more,
If it starts a Sitting Bull roar.
Rosebud, I might try the Sioux
That I picked up on on you.
But, I guess, that war-whoops, howling
You d shoot back, plus stoic scowling.
Any blood of Rain-in-the-Face
Or Spotted Tail a merest trace
Under that sumac-colored bib ?
Now, young warrior, don t you fib,
Nor go yellow on ancestry
Not to an Irish Dutch Yankee see?
Of Hiawatha, have you heard,
Or Minnehaha, the tamarack bird ?
Were your grandsires in the ring
Of hell at Little Big Horn? Sing
Out, don t stare nor pucker up,
Have this sucker loving cup.
Well, goodby, so long, Rosebud,
Shun the rattlesnakes and mud.
The Sioux City Journal. Will Chamberlain.
RENUNCIATION.
At eventide the Pilgrim came
And knocked at the Beloved s door.
" Who s there?" a voice within, "Thy name?"
" T is I," he said. "Then knock no more.
As well ask thou a lodging of the sea,
There is no room herein for thee and me."
The Pilgrim went again his way
And dwelt with Love upon the shore
Of self-oblivion; and one day
He knocked again at the Beloved s door.
"Who s there?" "It is thyself," he now replied,
And suddenly the door was opened wide.
The Syrian World. Amoen Rihani.
103
MOTHER S DAY,
Just one brief day for mother, of all the whole long
year?
And there is not another who holds you half so dear.
Doesn t it seem a selfish notion, when she has given you
A life-time of devotion, and love both staunch and
true?
When childhood ills beset you, she kissed away the
pain,
And small delights she d get you til sunshine came
again.
When hardship laid its levy of toil and grief and care,
No burden was too heavy for her brave soul to bear.
Now though your way be reaching afar o er land and
sea,
You ll not forget the teaching secured at mother s
knee.
When troubles press about you as they too often will,
She won t distrust or doubt you, but has faith in you
still.
Then let us give to mother a lasting vote of praise;
Keep this and every other year full of Mother s days.
The South Akron Post. Mary Davis Reed.
HIGH HATTED.
Mary s hat of red
Makes me blue,
Almost knocks me dead,
Mary s hat of red
Glows upon her head,
But it s true
Mary s hat of red
Makes me blue.
The South Bend Tribune. Sadie Seagrave.
AMUNDSEN.
They have taken the cold, red canvas to set it in history ;
They have left the body of Malmgren adrift on a solid
sea
104
But watch, watch, watch as they re willing, no bird
comes out of the track
Where the white winds wail in the Arctic. And
Amundsen is not back.
He is not down on the ices. We have scanned the
ridges and fiords,
We have picked our path in the bowlders with our
parkas frozen to boards.
He is not lost in the blueness, he is not sunk in the
black. . . .
And the wintry gulls can only cry that Amundsen is
not back.
The dogs went out to the endless, the glittering blaze
of white,
With their hard feet bitten and broken by fangs of the
starving night ;
And the planes drone over the misting that s frozen
above the ground
But the pilots can only mutter that Amundsen is not
found.
The bosom that gave him muscle, the womb that
sheltered him then
Has taken him back to its secret with bones of forgot
ten men.
And the shrill, sad masts of the vessels that drift in a
far-locked fleet
Could tell that they heard his orders, and felt the
march of his feet !
Tooth and claw of the polars, mail of the wicked wind,
Broke the track of his going, ever his breeze was
thinned !
Malmgren lies in the Arctic and Mobile huddles in
Rome. ...
Night of the North has fallen and Amundsen has
gone home.
The Springfield Sunday Union and Republican.
MacKinlay Kantor.
105
POPCORN WILLIE,
Do the angels eat apples ? I wonder. . . .
A bell tinkled under the trees,
A shadow along the white roadway
Cast smoke to an old horse s knees. . . .
Oh, dinging and donging forever
A peddler was crying forlorn,
The psalm of his gay, hidden garden
The psalm of his cabbage and corn.
Half asleep under softness of summer
A thousand doors darkened with men
"Oh, give us fit food for a driver,
A dunce or a chittering wren !"
Half asleep through the tarnish of mid-day,
Umber hands loosened hold on the reins:
He sold them the curse in their foreheads,
He sold them the blood in their veins.
Will the angels eat cherries ? I wonder. . . .
A swift, happy rustle of wings,
And a coin tossed to poor Willie s halo
As down the deep pathway he sings !
Will he seek, as he endlessly peddles
His plums through viridian skies,
For the customers darkened in doorways
Who felt the light laugh of his eyes ?
The Springfield Union and Republican.
MacKinlay Kantor.
SUMMER.
High
In the blue sky
A round yellow moon ;
Free
In the almond tree
A mocking-bird s tune;
White
In the summer night
Roses whisper June !
The Springfield Union and Republican.
Sarah Hammond Kelly.
106
CONSTANCY.
Two pine trees in my yard
Have no especial grace;
Their beauty age has marred,
Yet faithfully they embrace
But when the warm winds blow
From the young, slim pines near-by,
Fragrant and fresh I know
They sway apart and sigh.
The Tampa Morning Tribune. Philip E. Barney.
THE OAK REPLIES.
I wandered in a silent wood
To where an age-old oak tree stood,
And, leaning on his sturdy breast
And peering through his lofty crest,
I made my fickle fancy say:
"Friend Oak, what is the time o day?"
Then spake this venerable tree:
"And who are you to question me?
My green lips kiss the face of God ;
You crawl or rot, a worm, a clod.
I was a tree when through these groves
The nude brave chased elusive loves.
I was a tree before these sands
First felt the feet of alien bands.
I was a tree when Genoa s son
From mystery a New World won.
I was a tree when Ponce sailed,
Hernando fell, Panfilo failed.
And what your name, your fame, your creed ?
A lifeless leaf, a way side weed.
What your brief hours of fears and tears
Against my immemorial years?
I will be here when you are dust,
Your plaudits mute, your treasures rust
And God will smile on me and say :
Friend Oak, what is the time o j day? 7 "
The Tampa Morning Journal. E. D. Lambright.
107
GIFTS.
I ll brew you a drink in a crystal cup,
As red as gleaming wine ;
When held to your lips you ll drink it up,
Pressed there by hand of mine.
I ll give you a ship with slender sails,
Scarlet and gay as sin,
And a forceful wind that never fails
To blow a vessel in.
I ll weave you a wreath of fragrant words,
Plucked from my soul, a part ;
I ll send you the songs of a thousand birds,
But ... I must keep my heart !
The Tampa Morning Tribune. Miss Zero.
SONGS.
I sing for you when you re away
Songs sweeter than the dawn of day,
Songs sweeter than the drops of dew
That fall at night from skies dark blue,
Songs sweeter than a day in spring
When mocking birds and thrushes sing.
And lighter far than all of these,
My fingers on responsive keys
In the mystic twilight hour
Seem to feel your magic power.
My every tone is sweet and true
In recreating them for you.
But on that night when you have come
My throat is tight and I am numb,
My hands are stiff, my voice is mute,
My fingers in a vain pursuit
Go stumbling over trending keys
Where once they played with quiet ease.
The Tampa Morning Tribune. Mary Alef Sparks.
108
A HANDFUL OF DREAMS.
I.
HALF MOON.
The imps
of the skies
are painting
the moon
with
the varnish
of death.
II.
MOON ECLIPSE.
Once a year
the dead souls
fly en masse
toward heaven
blackening the moon.
III.
WINDS OF ROMANY.
The wind
is a wild gypsy
dancer
using the moon
for a tambourine.
The Tioga News. Frank Ankeribrand, Jr.
SPRING IN EAST TEXAS.
Today, I stood with aching throat,
In sunny meadows, starred with gold,
Where daisies open drowsy eyes
When burnished buttercups unfold.
And I have paused in wonderment
Before a dazzling dogwood tree,
To barter Care for shining dreams
Beneath its green white mystery.
As close beside Spring s queenly bride,
The redbuds winsome sprays
Are lifted to a mist- veiled sky,
The treetops thrill to roundelays
109
Of mocking-birds and cardinals
Cascading silver-sweet,
When wayward wild verbenas
Spread a carpet at my feet.
But oh! the witching fragrance,
Of a fair crab-apple tree
In crinkled, rosy-petalled frock,
Awakens Grief, and Ecstasy;
For intermingled with delight,
Comes grey Remembering,
And Joy that stabs my heart with pain :
I ve one less Texas Spring !
The Tyler Journal. Mary S. Fitzgerald.
THE CHANGING SEA.
I watched the sea today.
Its ever-changing moods appealed to me,
From restlessness to sweet tranquillity
So like to human life they seemed to be.
O human heart,
Thy faith shall triumph yet and thou rejoice
Its crown to see.
The sea is restless today,
With quick impatience tossing to and fro
The white caps on the waves like crests of snow,
Uncertainty in every ebb and flow.
troubled heart,
Let all thy restlessness subside in Him
Tis peace to know.
The sea is angry today,
The mighty billows breaking on the shore,
1 hear again their thunderous muffled roar,
While overhead the crying sea-gulls soar.
O angry one,
Let God s sweet mercy permeate thy soul
Who all forebore.
The sea is grey today.
All motion, light, and colors bright have fled,
The heavy clouds hang threatening like lead,
The sad winds sigh as if all hope were dead.
110
Despairing heart,
Fresh courage take, for while the Savior lives
Hope lifts her head.
The sea is gay today.
A rollicking soft breeze blows happily,
And merry little waves roll up in glee,
The pleasure-boats sail by so pleasantly.
O happy heart,
Rejoice in Thy Redeemer, sing aloud
His grace so free.
The sea is glorious today.
The ripples sparkling in the sunshine bright,
Both sea and sky a wondrous blue. The light
On yonder hills a vision of delight.
O burdened heart,
Look up, be strong, Heaven s beauties are for thee
And yet more bright.
The sea is calm today.
As if some hand had soothed it into rest.
Now it lies peaceful, quiet, and suppressed,
No break or ripple on its placid breast.
O peaceful heart,
To whom the Source of peace has been revealed.
Yes, thou canst rest!
The War Cry. Captain Margaret Stratton.
WHAT MATTER?
Books, and a cozy fire !
To me, it does not matter that the rain,
Lashed by the gale, against he windowpane,
Sweeps o er the town,
Nor that the whistling wind, with ice-cold lips
Kisses the unwilling cheek, the fingertips
Smarting from his unwelcome touch, and down
The ill-lit street, complaining, as it goes,
The muddy water flows.
With me, companionship of which I never tire
Books, and a cozy fire !
The Wasp. Ella C. Forbes.
Ill
A BUD.
A Bud is a flower baby, sweet and green,
So small at first, it scarcely may be seen,
But when it wakes it first uncurls its head,
And peeps between the curtains of its bed,
And then it sticks its hands out and its toes,
Slips on its little dress, and is a rose.
The Wasp. Mary E. Forbes.
A LITTLE COUNTRY PAPER.
I get a little paper from a little country town
A far cry from the dailies, that on Sundays weigh us
down ;
It s printed every Friday, and it has no supplement,
Nor colored rotogravure, but I m always glad it s sent.
It gives no clever verses by the syndicated bards,
But states that Mrs. Williams entertained some friends
at cards ;
"Ye scribe" saw Judge McArthur shaking hands with
friends today
It says the Curtis family sold out and moved away.
On Boulder Dam it s silent, and there s nothing on
finance
It tell that the Rebekahs gave an installation dance.
That Miss Day is returning soon to open up her school,
That Alexander Hargrave lost a valuable mule.
It s glad that Jimmy Gallagher can be around again.
It claims that the alfalfa crop is much in need of rain ;
The supervisors voted for the road work to commence ;
Will Anderson hauled lumber for his new garage and
fence. . . .
The worldly ones may smile at it, but theirs are tender
smiles
These home town items form a bond through many
years and miles.
Oh, little country paper, with your little weekly talks !
I like to wander with you down remembered roads and
walks.
The Wasp. Clara McCreery.
112
MONTANA WIVES.
I had to laugh,
For when she said it we were sitting by the door,
And straight down was the Fork,
Twisting and turning and gleaming in the sun.
And then your eyes carried across to the purple bench
beyond the river,
With the Beartooth mountains fairly screaming with
light and blue and snow,
And fold and turn of rimrock and prairie as far as
your eye could go.
And she says : "Dear Laura, sometimes I feel so sorry
for you,
Shut away from everything . . .
Just pray for happier days to come, and bear it."
She goes back to Billings, to her white stucco house,
And looks through net curtains at another white stucco
house.
And a brick house,
And a yellow frame house,
And six trimmed poplar trees,
And little squares of shaved grass.
Oh, dear, she stared at me like I was daft.
I couldn t help it ! I just laughed and laughed.
The Wasp. Gwendolyn Haste.
WINSOME AS A FAIRY.
Just a dainty little Flapper
With her sock below the knee,
And a most entrancing dimple
Where the stocking ought to be.
Eyes of blue and pretty dimples
Lend their charm to form and face,
Where no lipstick has invaded
And all rouging out of place.
She is winsome as a fairy
In her abbreviated skirt,
And it is an open secret
She s a regular little flirt.
113
All who see her learn to love her
For her captivating ways,
And adorers without number
Sing their peans in her praise.
Always smiling and beguiling
With a heart of purest gold,
She is worth a million dollars
And is almost six years old.
The Wasp. Charles L. Tompkins.
THAT S MY DOG.
(Joe.)
Lying around in a shady place ;
A look that s human on his kindly face,
Lazily scratching now and then
And laughing, perhaps at the ways of men,
That s my dog.
Barking a welcome when I come in,
And more to be trusted than kith or kin.
Doing his best to talk out loud
And finding* his master in any crowd,
That s my dog.
Always wagging a friendly tail ;
Trotting behind when I go for the mail,
Shaggy and dirty with maybe a flea
But ready if needed to fight for me,
That s my dog.
Known and loved all over the Sho
Answering to his name when you call him "Joe"
Pedigree uncertain but he d put to shame,
Some Christian people tisn t wise to name,
That s my dog.
Playful with children and friendly with folks,
Ready to romp he understands jokes ;
Humble of origin but a Gentleman, sure,
True blue as they make em, solid gold to the core,
That s my dog.
114
Friendly and affectionate, kindly and brave,
Sharing with his master a mansion or cave ;
Patient and faithful true to the last
He doesn t count sins nor question your past.
That s my dog.
He s shaggy and dirty with maybe a flea,
But his heart s bigger n yours and he s loyal to me.
Uncertain of pedigree and untainted by pride,
To the end of the road he ll walk by my side.
In the big book up yonder he ll not be incog
For his soul s bigger n mine, and
That s my dog.
The Wicomico News. W. C. Thurston.
AB CLEARWATER S COUNTRY STORE.
It stood on a corner of the Continental Road
Where a lane wandered down to a mill,
And men came to it past a little white church
And from over the Ox-bow Hill.
In front was a porch with wide sheltering eaves
And benches where neighboring swains
Loitered and talked of their lands and their flocks,
In the leisurely summer rains.
Within, there were boxes and barrels from Rio,
With stout bags of Japanese rice
And here a boy s heart flew away on wings
And dreamed of far-off, magical things
In the air filled sweet with spice.
The windows gape widely ; the store has long passed ;
And so has the lane and the mill ;
With them the men that came by the church
And the swains from the Ox-bow Hill.
Old country stores have a way of returning
To the heart through the mist of the years,
With faint scent of spices and dreams of childhood
With old loves and faces and tears.
The Williamsport Sun. Clarence L. Peaslee.
115
CHEATING AT SOLITAIRE.
When old age comes slyly peeping,
Even though she catch my eye,
To her most subservient creeping
Due devoirs I shall deny.
When the sun has set then boldly
Phantoms of the night draw near,
I shall listen to them coldly
And pretend I do not hear.
The Williamsport Sun. Virginia Spates.
DON CARLOS.
(California Folk Song.)
Down on the Plaza they are dancing,
Tapping pointed heels, clicking castanets,
Oh, Don Carlos, they are dancing
In the darkness deeper than your eyes.
Caballeros bowing to their partners,
Saucy faces nod, masking in their fans,
Holding their guitars, the young hidalgos
Pluck the lazy music on the strings.
Oh, Don Carlos, you are lying
Dead at Monterey, slain at Monterey
Down on the Plaza they are dancing
In the darkness deeper than your eyes.
The Williamsport Sun. Beulah May.
HOUSES.
Almost I had forgotten what a house was for :
So velvet-soft the green turf on earth s floor;
So cool the high-hung tapestry of trees ;
So bright and sheer the curtains of the sun.
I had no need of houses till the day was done,
And wind and storm came threatening the night ;
Then I remembered my warm hearth once more,
And fled the frenzied rain, and shut my door.
The Williamsport Sun. Natalie Flohr.
116
FIRE- WEED IN AUTUMN.
(A Tanka.)
The tall willow-herb
Has opened its pods of seed;
Should a breeze disturb
This ghost of the rose fire-weed,
Ephemeral wings are freed.
The Williamsport Sun. May Folwell Hoisington.
OBLATION.
What shall I give you ? Ah ! What shall I give you ?
Purple of twilight and silver of mist,
Gold of the sunset or flame of the sunrise,
Opal of night-sky by silver moon kis t.
These would I give you ! Ah ! These would I give you !
Flower of my heart were the right but mine!
Yet all I may give is the gold of love s bondage,
A heart s adoration to burn at your shrine.
The Williamsport Sun. Margie Calinder-Rule.
LACK.
She couldn t understand when he d go off alone . . .
Into his shop or out for a walk,
Or sit by the fire staring straight into it ...
She called it stubborn when he didn t talk;
She couldn t understand one s self for company . . .
And she grew suspicious as the thing went on ...
He d draw her attention to a star in the sky,
Or speak glowingly of the coming of dawn ;
She didn t see what he saw in these things,
They were never what she thought about . . .
And she started watching, cunning as a fox,
And counting each day the hours he spent out ;
And he grew so tired of her small insinuations,
He felt trapped like some poor little mouse,
And she couldn t understand, and he didn t understand,
When love up and left both them and their house !
The Williamsport Sun. Peter A. Lea.
117
GRISELDA.
Griselda, you of the little hands,
With the wanton light in your eyes,
What do you care for the golden bands,
What do you know of surprise?
Whitest one of the moon-mad maids,
With a body lured for lust,
You sing a song for the half-afraids,
And you take the rest on trust !
Griselda, you of the dancing feet,
Your hold is old as the sun,
All-comers your crimson mouth will greet
Till the last poor fool is done !
The Williainsport Sun. E. Leslie Spaulding.
MOYEN AGE.
Heart of me,
If Sathanas would barter and buy and sell,
Would you traffic with him and lose me in Hell,
Heart of me ?
Soul of me,
Yes, if only the Devil will chaffer and buy,
There is none so ready to sell you as I,
Soul of me.
Heart of me,
And for what simulacrum or dream would I pay?
What exchange would you get in the Black Old Way,
Heart of me ?
Soul of me,
In her mirror, deep hidden, her image lies ;
And the Fiend could conjure it up to my eyes,
Soul of me.
Heart of me,
I, also, am empty ... so late filled with joy;
Call up Satan and sell me, poor desolate toy,
Heart of me!
The Williamsport Sun. May Folwell Hoisington.
118
NANTUCKET SEA-CAPTAINS.
Men of Nantucket! Awake, the dawn s breaking!
Dim in the heavens fades out the last star;
Freshening, the wind in the offing is calling,
Welters of water dash over the bar.
Men of Nantucket! Time was when your vessels
Were far on the main at daylight s first beam;
Now, you lie sleeping, your loved ships forgetting,
Why play the laggard ! Why tarry to dream !
Men of Nantucket! Old visions still linger:
The murk of the storm, the roar of the blast ;
The mist-hidden breakers, the frenzy of waters,
The doom-driven wreck, the crash of the mast.
Men of Nantucket ! Your fleets are far-scattered
Lost on the sea or some treacherous shore ;
Great Point or Squam Head will ne er again greet them,
And Sankaty Light will guide them no more.
O, Men of Nantucket! Men of Wauwinet!
Men of quaint Sconset, afar down the beach!
You who so often have heard the waves calling,
How can you sleep, with the sea in your reach !
The Williamsport Sun. Harry Pringle Ford.
TOWN OF MARINE, ILLINOIS.
(Settled in 1816.)
Once sailors from New England s shores came west
To found a town out on the rolling green
Of prairie . . . this old dreaming town, Marine,
Remains to tell the wonders of the quest.
Were waves of grain like other waves they knew,
Did plow and harrow count for ships once seen,
Was pear-bloom foaming surf when high winds blew?
The Williamsport Sun. Sophie Tunnell.
TIME.
Time is immovable; before it ages pass
As winged things that never find their rest ;
Life, like a bird against the beacon s glass,
Breaks its frail wings upon time s granite breast.
The Williamsport Sun. John Richard Moreland.
119
THE VAGABOND.
When he was a little boy,
He used to run away
From his red painted wagon
And the other boys at play.
He d start down the turnpike
With his face to the sun
And he d go just as far
As his stout legs could run,
His clothes would be dusty ;
His face soiled and black,
But he d keep going onward
Till someone brought him back.
When he was a grown man,
His heart ran away
From the fond painted things
For which most men pay
A big, red factory
With chimneys belching smoke,
A degree from some college,
A title that s a joke
His clothes might be dusty;
His face grim and black,
But his heart kept going onward
And he couldn t bring it back.
When he was an old man,
His soul ran away
From the ante-mortem burial
For which most men pay.
And his soul sought valiantly,
Beyond the sordid strife,
For it s own brief ripple
In the coursing stream of life*
His clothes might be dusty;
His face grim and black,
But his soul kept going onward
And he couldn t bring it back.
He didn t have a penny
At the end of his quest ;
The grave was very shallow
Where they laid him to rest ;
120
But he came not empty-handed
To his narrow final place,
For he carried all he d treasured
In the smile upon his face.
His clothes were worn and rusty,
His features lined and black
But his soul kept surging onward
And he wouldn t bring it back.
The Williamsport Sun. Clarence L. Peaslee.
VIA DOLOROSA.
Via Dolorosa, narrow "way of pain";
Buttressed, flag-stoned, arch-wayed avenue,
Down where storied pavements echoes fling again
Tread of Holy Feet that, hurried through,
Bore the Christ, Our Saviour beated and betrayed,
From the Mount of Olives to that hill
Where three crosses lifted arms that cannot fade ;
Where Golgotha symboled, "Not my will."
The Williamsport Sun. Margarette Ball Dickson.
YOUTH.
Youth, oh youth !
Be silent and but bow,
There s many a man
Too old to fight,
But who can show you how.
The Williamsport Sun. John Hansen Rhoades.
WHITE CLOVER.
Through an April turnstile
I came to find
Green fire in the meadow,
Creeping, blind . . .
Through a May Day turnstile
I came and Lo!
That meadow conflagration
Is finger-deep in snow.
The Williamsport Sun. Anne M. Robinson.
121
NEWSPAPER INDEX
I wish to express my gratitude and obligations to
the following publishers and authors for the material
used in this book :
PAGE
THE ALBANY DEMOCRAT-HERALD,
Albany, Oregon.
The Poetic Housewife, Mary Jane Carter 9
THE AMERICAN HEBREW, New York, N. Y.
I Have Trod out the Winepress Alone, Flora
Cameron Burr 9
Miss Burr was born in Carse O Gowrie, Perthshire,
Scotland. Writes poetry and short stories. Many of
her poems are in the Scotch dialect. A number have
been set to music. Resides in Bottineau, North
Dakota.
THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS, Birmingham, Ala.
Blue Birds, Mary Pollard Tynes 10
Mrs. Tynes is a club-woman and writer of lyrics,
shei resides in Birmingham, Ala.
THE BOSTON HERALD, Boston, Mass.
A la Advertising, William H. Howard 10
Jazz Love, James L. Edwards.- 11
Lines for a Nameless Grave, Ernie . . 12
Old Poem Revised, James L. Edwards 12
Protection, R. C. Skinner 11
Villanelle of a Lady Content, Helene R. B 14
THE BOSTON POST, Boston, Mass.
Silver Linings, Edwin Gordon Lawrence 14
THE BOSTON TRANSCRIPT, Boston, Mass.
The Glory of Her Face, Washington Fan Dusen. 15
Mr, Van Dusen is Chief Clerk United Gas Improve
ment Company. His poems have a wide circulation.
Home, Philadelphia, Pa.
123
PAGE
THE BRATTLEBORO REFORMER, Brattle-
boro, Vt.
Make the World a Little Better, Arthur Good-
enough 13
The Valley of Longing, Arthur Goodenough. ... 17
Mr. Goodenough was born in Brattleboro, Vt.
Farmer and writer. Author, Songs of Four Decades.
Home, West Brattleboro, Vt.
THE BURLINGAME ADVANCE-STAR, Bur-
lingame, California.
Picaro, Lee Hinton 15
THE CASPER INDEPENDENT, Casper, Wyo.
The Bum Lamb, Red Cummings 16
Ray Cummings is known locally as "Red," and re
garded as a second Bobby Burns. Experiences of a
herder are his theme. Home, Casper, Wyo.
THE CEDAR RAPIDS GAZETTE, Cedar Rap
ids, Iowa.
Summer Solstice on the Wapsipinicon, Jay G.
Sigmund 17
Mr. Sigmund was born at Waybeek, Iowa. He is
Vice-President Cedar Rapids Life Insurance Co. Poet,
short story writer. Resides Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
THE CHARLESTON POST, Charleston, South
Carolina.
After the Collision, Louise Crenshaw Ray 20
At Hatteras Light, Howard Mumford Jones. ... 18
THE CHICAGO POST, Chicago, 111.
A Smile, Charles A. Heath 20
Mr. Heath was born in Stockbridge, Mass. Gradu
ate Williams College. Home, Chicago, 111.
Sees Zep Love Boat, Rev. Henry C. Offerman. . 19
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Chicago, 111.
Bremen, MacKinlay Kantor 19
Hush Your Lips from Laughter, Donfarran. ... 24
Let Not Youth Read, Billy D 22
THE CHICOPEE HERALD, Chicopee, Mass.
Easter, William Kimberley Palmer 22
Born at Crawfordsville, Ind. Author, Success and
How It Can Be Won; Nobility of the Negro; Ameri
can Nights. Home, Chicopee, Mass.
124
PAGE
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Bos
ton, Mass.
Tule Jewels, Oscar H. Roesner 25
Mr. Roesner was born in Denver, Colo. Educated
at the State Normal School, Chico, Calif., and the
University of California. His interests are poetry,
sociology, hunting and fishing. Writer and farmer.
Home, LiViS Oak, Calif.
THE CINCINNATI TIMES-STAR, Cincinnati,
Ohio.
Being a Friend, B. Y. Williams 23
Bittersweet, Georgia D. Valentiner 21
Elegy, Ruth Winslow Gordon 21
"He Was Crazy When He Did it," Edwin C.
Walley 24
Prayer, Elisabeth Williams 27
Roadside Markets, Ad aline H. Tatman 26
Still Waters, Ruth Winslow Gordon 28
The Broken Song, Howard Maxzvell Bogart. ... 28
The Fly-Up-The- Creek, Clark B. Firestone. ... 26
Weeds, Annette Patton Cornell 32
THE COLUMBUS CITIZEN, Columbus, Ohio.
Candle-Light, Helen Myra Ross 30
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, Columbus, Ohio.
Moss, Tessa Sweazy Webb 30
Mrs. Webb conducts the poetry column of The Dis
patch. Home, Columbus, Ohio.
On the Evening Air, Mildred Schanck 29
Some Day, Mary E. Schanck 30
THE CONCORD DAILY MONITOR, Concord,
N. H.
The Follower, Jack Lively 28
IVCr. Lively was born in England. Came to U. S.
about fifteen years ago. Resides, Andover, N. H.
THE CONWAY NEWS, Conway, Ark.
Sunlight On the Hills, Cora Barber Crary 31
THE DAILY NIPPU JIJI, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Mother, Shinju Akahoshi 32
Wild Night Wind, Isami Morita 31
125
PAGE
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Dallas, Tex. .
To An Old Desk, Berta Hart Nance 33
Miss Nance was born in Shackelford County,
Texas, and has been a contributor of verse and prose
to newspapers and magazines for the past twenty
years. Home, Albany, Tex.
THE DETROIT NEWS, Detroit, Mich.
Sea Child, Helen Janet Miller 33
Miss Miller was born in Tuscola County, Mich.
Her poems are meeting with the approval of the
leading publications of the country. Home, River
Rouge, Mich.
Submarine S-4, Cecelia Maloney 34
The Happier Tomorrow, Myrtella Sutherland. . 36
THE DOTHAN EAGLE, Dothan, Ala.
Challenge, Scottie McKenzie Frasier 32
Mrs. Frasier has won success on the lecture plat
form, as well as in literature. Her poems have been
copied. She is the author of several books of vsrse.
Residence, Dothan, Ala.
THE EL PASO TIMES, El Paso, Tex.
The Christmas Bells, Edwin Gordon Lawrence. 34
THE ENID EAGLE, Enid, Okla.
The Cross in Flanders, Helen Parkinson-Neal. . 36
THE ESTES PARK TRAIL, Estes Park, Colo.
Memories, Elwood H. Sheppard 37
THE GREENFIELD DAILY REPORTER,
Greenfield, Ind.
In Memoriam; James Whitcomb Riley, Henry
Coffin. Fellow 35
Dr. Fellow was born in Indiana. Received his de
gree at Nebraska Wesleyan University. He is the
author of several books of verse. He is a member
of the Kansas Author s Club, the International Writ
er s League and is listed in "Who s Who among
North American Authors," and in "Who s Who in
Journalism." Home, Wichita, Kans.
THE HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN, Hono
lulu, Hawaii.
A Chinese Garden, Isami Morita 38
Mr. Morita is Timekeeper at Lihue Plantation,
Hanamaulu, Kauai, T. H.
126
PAGE
Kilauea, Edward Winterer 38
Oahu Hills, Clifford Gessler 40
Mr. Ges sler is telegraph editor and literary editor
of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Author Kanaka Moon.
Home, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Ode at the Winter Solstice, Clifford Gessler 40
Pagan Patterns, Fred E. Trueman 39
Mr. Trueman was born in Lithuania. He is Presi
dent of the Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club. Be
sides, Honolulu, Hawaii.
Two Chords, Fred E. Trueman 42
THE HARTFORD TIMES, Hartford, Conn.
House-Cleaning, Florence Van Fleet Lyman. ... 43
Mrs. Ly man s interests are literature, floral garden
ing, golf and social service. Author of books on
flower culture. Home, Longmeadow, Mass.
THE HARBOR SPRINGS REPUBLICAN,
Harbor Springs, Mich.
Be Thankful, Charles A. Heath 41
THE HOLLYWOOD CITIZEN, Hollywood,
Calif.
Home, Frederick M. Steele 46
THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE, Houston, Tex.
Ancient Marshes, F. A. Dewson 45
Mr. Dewson was born in Boston, Mass. Nurs ery-
man. Resides in Houston, Tex.
THE INDIANAPOLIS SUNDAY STAR, In
dianapolis, Ind.
Wading, Lyhas Clyde Seal 44
Mr. Seal is known as the "Flower Poet of Indi
ana." He is author of Songs of a Lifetime, and
Garden of Song. Interests are flowers and poetry.
Home, Columbus, Ind.
THE ITHACA JOURNAL-NEWS, Ithaca, N. Y.
Sweet Music, Phil Armstrong 43
THE JACKSONVILLE JOURNAL, Jackson
ville, I1L
Little Coves, John Kearns 44
Mr. Kearns is a native of Illinois. Writes* verse,
stories, plays and reviews. His hobby is writing- and
directing romatic and historical pagents. Home,
Jacksonville, HL
127
PAGti
THE JEWISH TRIBUNE, New York City, N. Y.
Innuendo, Marion King 46
Inversion, Henry Kane 45
The Difference, Julia Lois Cahn 47
The Eternal Jew, Simon Mayer 47
To Nathan Straus, George Alexander Kohut. . . 48
THE KENTUCKY KERNAL, Louisville, Ky.
I Read My Poems, H. H. Fuson 48
Mr. Fuson was born in Kentucky. Author The
Pinnacle, and Just from Kentucky. Home, Louisville,
Ky.
THE KANSAS CITY TIMES, Kansas City, Mo.
Awareness, Henry Polk Lowenstein 49
Mr. Lowenstein was born in Monroe County, Tenn.
He is an attorney-at-law. His 1 poems have appeared
in the Anthology of Newspaper Verse from the first
issue. Residence, Kansas City, Mo.
Morning, Henry Polk Lowenstein 49
THE KANSAS CITY STAR, Kansas City, Mo.
Fallen Idols, Lowe W. Wren 50
Mr. Wren is a free-lance writer. He was born in
Axtell, Kans. His poems appear in the leading news
papers and magazines. Home, Kansas City, Mo.
Now, Lowe W. Wren 51
The Old Orchard, Lowe W. Wren 50
The Smell O Mother s Bread, Flora Brownlee
Walker 52
THE LABOR ADVOCATE, Cleveland, Ohio.
Structure Workers, Ethel Knapp Behrman 53
THE LEWISTON SUN, Lewiston, Maine.
Path to Peace, Elsia Thomas Shillings 52
Spring Night, Susan S finch field Williams 54
THE LEWISTON EVENING JOURNAL, Lew
iston, Maine.
In Memoriam, Lillian W. Pelletier 53
Little Stockings In a Row, Alma Pendexter
Hayden 54
Moon Magic, Blanche A. Sawyer 55
The Old Willow Trees, Rev. William Wood. ... 56
128
PAGE
THE LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL,
Louisville, Ky.
Beargrass Creek, Kalfus Kurtz Gusling 56
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Los Angeles,
Calif.
I Shall Go Home, Mabel W. Phillips 55
Misfs Phillips was born in Saginaw, Mich. She is
a bookkeeper. Home, Glendale, Calif.
The Bad Little Boy, Lee Shippey 58
The Unknown Reporter, Lee Shippey 57
THE LOS ANGELES SATURDAY NIGHT,
Los Angeles, Calif.
At The Olympic Games, Annice Calland 59
THE MANCHESTER JOURNAL, Manchester,
Vt.
Slippery Places, Walter A. Hard 60
THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL, Milwaukee,
Wis.
Thanksgiving, Lindsay Hob en 59
THE MILWAUKEE SENTINEL, Milwaukee,
Wis.
Winds, Sam Bryan 60
Mr. Bryan was born in Washington, D. C. Ex
aminer on staff Wisconsin Railway Commission.
Home, Milwaukee, Wis.
THE MILL VALLEY RECORD, Mill Valley,
Calif.
Armistice Day, Mar go 62
The Rosary, Joan Woodward 62
Waiting, W. G. Bratton 61
THE MOBILE REGISTER, Mobile, Ala.
Longing, Millie C. Pomeroy 63
THE MUSKOGEE PHOENIX, Muskogee, Okla.
One Walks in Little Seminole, Hala Jean Ham
mond . - 63
Miss Hammond is on the editorial staff of The
Muskogee Phoenix. In "Who s Who Among 1 North
American Authors." Home, Muskogee, Okla.
129
PAGE
THE NEW CANAAN ADVERTISER, New
Canaan, Conn.
Aunt Shaw s Pet Jug, Holeman Day 64
Castles in Spain, Herman A. Heydt 66
Mr. Heydt is an attorney in New York City. Sum
mer home, New Canaan, Conn.
Mother, H. G, Benedict 65
The Cathedral, Herman A. Heydt 67
THE NEW DOMINION, Morgantown, W. Va.
Across the Years, Elisabeth Dams Richards 68
Miss Richards is 1 Poetry Review Editor of The New
Dominion. Author Leaves of Laurel, and The Ped
dler of Dreams. Home, Morgantown, W. Va.
THE NEW DEMOCRAT, Georgetown, Ohio.
Dreaming Dreams of You, Ruth Markley
Buchanan 69
THE NEW YORK EVENING GRAPHIC, New
York City, N. Y.
Certain Homely Girls, Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni. . 69
Mrs. Marinoni is the author of Behind the Mask.
Resides in Fayetteville, Ark.
If, Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni 70
THE NEW YORK EVENING POST, New
York City, N. Y.
Ben Jonson, Jr., Wilfred J. Funk 70
Habitude, Ruth Evelyn Henderson 66
THE NEW YORK TIMES, New York, N. Y.
From a Hilltop, Bert Cooksley 70
Motif, Catherine Gate Coblentz 71
Salute ! E. Leslie Spaulding 71
Mr. Spaulding is an attorney-at-law. Home, Mc
Gregor, la.
Silhouette, Violet Alley n Storey 72
The Gipsy from Galway, Sonia Ruthele Novak. 72
The Lincoln Memorial, Louise Crenshaw Ray ... 74
Winds and Waters, Lewis Worthington Smith. . 74
Mr. Smith was born at Malta, I1L Member of the
faculty of Drake University. Lecturer. Author Cur
rent Reviews. Residence, Des Moines, la.
Riches, Helen Maring 73
Helen Maring (Mrs. Theo. B. Samsel) wasf born in
Seattle, Wash. Editor Muse and Mirror. Home,
Seattle, Wash.
130
PAGE
THE NEW YORK WORLD, New York City,
N. Y.
Bare Legs, Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni 75
THE NONPARTISAN LEADER, Bismarck, N.
Dak.
The Intolerants, Flora Cameron Burr 75
THE NORFOLK VIRGINIAN-PILOT, Nor
folk, Va.
Sea Burial, John Richard M or eland 76
Mr. Moreland is a writer and critic and has classes
in verse technique. Author Red Popples In the
Wheat, and The Sea and April. Home, Norfolk, Va.
The Snob, Virginia McCormick 76
Thoughts, John Richard Moreland 77
THE OAKLAND TRIBUNE, Oakland, Calif.
A Desire, Elna Forsell Pawson t 77
Gypsy Fires, Alex R. Schmidt 77
Johnnie- Jump-Ups, Bessie I. Sloan 78
Lipstick, Greta Larsdottir 78
Moods, Alice Gertrude Pogue 78
Opals, Rauol Dorsay 79
"Reminiscence," Gertrude Schroder 80
Retrospect, Greta Elliot 80
Trail Magic, Rauol Dorsay 80
Ships, Addison B. Schuster , 81
Mr. Schuster was born in Rockford, 111. Literary
editor The Oakland Tribune. Home, Berkeley, Calif.
The Grouch, Lela Glase 81
"Take Up Our Quarrel with the Foe/ Laura
Bell Everett 82
Wild Rose and Myrrh, Minnie Faegre Knox... 82
THE OKLAHOMAN, Oklahoma City, Okla.
The Magdalena River, Kenneth C. Kaufman. ... 83
THE OREGON SUNDAY JOURNAL, Portland,
Ore.
Caldron, Helen Maring 84
131
PAGE
THE PHILO-DUNCAN NEWS, Philo-Duncan,
Ohio.
Just Because, Helen Smales 84
THE PORTLAND SPECTATOR, Portland, Ore.
Dandelions in the Sun, Annette Wynne 85
From Anniversary Ode, Mary Lowell Rebec. . . 85
The Blessing, June Mac MUlan Ordway 85
The Last Toast, A. MacMaster 89
THE PITTSBURGH OBSERVER, Pittsburgh,
Pa.
Lonely, Homing, All Alone Coming Home to
You, Marie Tello Phillips 90
Mrs. Phillips is President JbJookfellows Library
Guild. Author A Book of Verses. Home, Pitts
burgh, Pa.
THE PHILADELPHIA EVENING BUL
LETIN, Philadelphia, Pa.
Wind s Lullaby, Rebecca Helman 86
Undaunted, Charles Bancroft 86
Mr. Bancroft was educated in England. He is
Chairman of the standing committee of the Society
of Arts and Letters, Philadelphia. Resides, Nor
wood, Pa.
Song of the Irish Sea, Charles Bancroft 86
Roads, Anne M. Robinson 87
THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, Providence,
R. I.
At Mass, Mary Butler Dursin 88
Valentine Day, Dorothy C. Allen 89
THE RUTLAND HERALD, Rutland, Vt.
A Day in My Garden, Jane S. Butler. . . * 90
A Girl Like You, Ozias Gauthier 92
Embers, Frank F. Rogers 92
My Gold Star Flag, Mrs. S. McNulty 93
The Elect Lady, Arthur Goodenough 94
The Lost Road, Katherine S. Smith 94
THE SACRAMENTO UNION, Sacramento,
Calif.
Hill Towns, Eunice Mitchell Lehmer 95
132
PAGE
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, Salt Lake City,
Utah.
Nostalgia, Maud Chegwidden 96
Mrs. Chegwidden was born in Bradford, England.
Home, Murray, Utah.
Pendragon Lane, Maud Chegwidden 96
Sego Lily, Jessie Miller Robinson 97
THE SAN ANTONIO EVENING NEWS, San
Antonio, Texas.
Point of View, Hazel Harper Harris 98
THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, San
Francisco, Calif.
Gjoa To Amundsen, John G. Jury 98
The Singers Pass, Alva Romanes 100
THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN, Santa Fe,
N. M.
Hunter s Advice, S. Omar Barker 100
Mr, Barker was born in Beulah, N. M. Poet and
short story writer. Resides, Santa Fe, N. M.
THE SANTA ROSA REPUBLICAN, Santa
Rosa, Calif.
As of Old, Oscar H. Roesner 99
THE SEATTLE POST - INTELLIGENCER,
Seattle, Wash.
Pendulum, Helen Maring 102
THE SIOUX CITY JOURNAL, Sioux City,
Iowa.
An Old Sioux in Court, Will Chamberlain 102
Mr. Chamberlain was an early settler of South
Dakota. Author Songs of the Sioux. Teacher and
Writer and Columnist Home, Tankton, S. Dak.
Papoose, Will Chamberlain 102
THE SOUTH AKRON POST, South Akron,
Ohio.
Mother s Day, Mary Davis Reed 104
THE SOUTH BEND TRIBUNE, South Bend,
Ind.
High Hatted, Sadie Seagrave 104-
133
PAGli
THE SPRINGFIELD SUNDAY UNION AND
REPUBLICAN, Springfield, Mass.
Amundsen, MacKinlay Kant or 104
Entreaty, Rebecca Helman 101
Popcorn Willie, MacKinlay Kant or 106
Summer, Sarah Hammond Kelly 106
THE SYRIAN WORLD, New York City, N. Y.
Renunciation, Ameen Rihani 103
THE TAMPA MORNING TRIBUNE, Tampa,
Fla.
Constancy, Philip E. Barney 107
Mr. Barney is the editor of the column "The Gulf
Scream." Resides, Tampa, Fla.
Gifts, Miss Zero 108
The Oak Replies, E. D. Lambright 107
Mr. Lambright is the Editor of The Tampa Morn
ing Tribune. Home, Tampa, Fla.
Songs, Mary Alef Sparks 108
THE TIOGA NEWS, Philadelphia, Pa.
A Handful of Dreams, Frank Ankenbrand, Jr. .109
THE TYLER JOURNAL, Tyler, Texas.
Spring in East Texas, Mary S. Fitzgerald 109
THE WAR CRY, Atlanta, Ga.
The Changing Sea, Captain Margaret Stratton. .110
THE WASP, San Francisco, Calif.
A Bud, Mary E. Forbes 112
A Little Country Paper, Clara McCreery 112
Montana Wives, Gwendolyn Haste 113
What Matter? Ella C. Forbes Ill
Winsome as a Fairy, Charles L. Thompkins 113
THE WICOMICO NEWS, Salisbury, Md.
That s My Dog, W. C. Thurston 114
THE WILLIAMSPORT SUN, Williamsport, Pa.
Ab Clearwater s Country Store, Clarence L.
Peaslee 115
Mr. Peaslee is an attorney-at-law. He is editor of
"Attic Salt." Home, Williamsport, Pa.
134
PAGE
Cheating at Solitaire, Virginia Spates 116
Dr. Spates is a practicing physician. Home, Sher
man, Texas.
Don Carlos, Beulah May 116
Fire- Weed in Autumn, May F dwell Hoisington.\\7
Griselda, E. Leslie Spaulding 118
Houses, Natalie Flohr 116
Miss Flohr was born in Blumeneau, Brazil, S. A.
Teacher and Secretary. Residence, River Forest, 111.
Lack, Peter A. Lea 117
Moyen Age, May Folwell Hoisington 118
Nautucket Sea-Captains, Harry Pringle Ford. ..119
Oblation, Margie CaKnder-Rule 117
The Vagabond, Clarence L. Peaslee 120
Time, John Richard Mor eland 119
Town of Marine, Illinois, Sophie Tunnell 119
Miss Tunnell was born in Edwardsville, 111. Writer
and Teacher. Home, Bdwardsville, 111.
Via Dolorosa, Margarette Ball Dickson 121
Mrs. Dickson was born in Little Rock, Iowa. Presi
dent South Dakota branch American Pen Women.
Home, Vermillion, S. Dak.
Youth, John Harsen Rhodes 121
White Qover, Anne M. Robinson 121
135
BOOKS RECEIVED
ABBEYFEALE, and Other Poems. By Mary
Quinlan Laughlin.
The title poem, Abbeyfeale, is a distinctive descriptive
poem, with all the wistfulness of an Irish fairy story.
This poem alone is worth the price of the book. Many
of Mrs. Laughlin s poems are of a high order and show
fine selection of words and an excellent technique. Boards
and labels. Boston; Richard K. Badger, 1928.
BELLA VISTA BALLADS. By "Uncle Henry"
(Henry Coffin Fellows).
A charming little book of poems written at the Bella
Vista, Arkansas, summer resort* "Uncle Henry" has a
style that reminds one of Riley. Cloth, gilt. Wichita,
Kas.; Tima Publishing Co., 1928.
BRIGHT WORLD. By George Elliston.
A second book by this talented poet, whose originality
and beauty of expression place her among the leading
poets of the time. Boards and labels. New York; Harold
Vinal, Ltd., 1928.
BUCKAROO BALLADS. By S. Omar Barker.
This is a book of genuine cowboy ballads, by a poet
who is familiar with the lives of the men who ride the
western cattle range. As poetry these ballads rank high.
As a book of real western life I have not seen its equal.
Those who want real western poetry will appreciate
"Buckaroo Ballads." Barker sings of the southwest as
Service did of the north. A beautiful book, bound in
cloth with a cover design by Gerald Cassidy. Santa Fe,
New Mexico; The Santa Fe New Mexican Publishing
Company, 1928.
A BOOK OF VERSE. By Margo.
A collection of prose poems that appeared in the Mill
Valley (Calif.) Record. Mill Valley, Calif.; The Mill
Valley Record, 1928:
RAYS FROM SIDELIGHTS. By Googie.
Annual collection of prose and verse from Lional E.
Mintz s column "Side Lights," in the Ithaca (N, Y.)
Journal-News, 1928.
136
FLAME POINTS. By J. Graydon Jefferies.
This is a well made booklet of Mr. Jefferies appealing
poems. The author has talent and the printing is nicely
done by the press of the Bookmakers Publishers of Calla-
han, Florida, 1928.
RANDOM THOUGHTS OF A MAN AT FIFTY.
By John Harsen Rhoades.
This is an interesting book of poems and prose, carry
ing a real message of business maxims and opinions, by
a man of position in the financial world. It is a worth
while book and the thought back of it is very beautiful.
Silk cloth. Titles in gold. New York; The Knickerbocker
Press, 1928.
THE SEA AND APRIL. By John Richard More-
land.
There is something appealing about Mr. Moreland s
poetry, and a certain amount of charm in his poems of
the sea. Boards. New York; James T. White & Co.,
1928.
137
