Works

Illileo, the moonlight seemed lost across the vales -
The stars but strewed the azure as an armor's scattered scales;
The airs of night were quiet as the breath of silken sails,...

Ha! My dear! I'm back again -
Vendor of Bohemia's wares!
Lordy! How it pants a man
Climbing up those awful stairs!
Well, I've made the dealer say
Your sketch might sell, anyway!...

Our Land - our Home - the common home indeed
Of soil-born children and adopted ones -
The stately daughters and the stalwart sons
Of Industry: All greeting and godspeed!...

Picnics is fun 'at's purty hard to beat.
I purt'-nigh ruther go to them than eat.
I purt'-nigh ruther go to them than go
With our Charlotty to the Trick-Dog Show.

To the Elect of Love, - or side-by-side
In raptest ecstasy, or sundered wide
By seas that bear no message to or fro
Between the loved and lost of long ago.



...

Parunts knows lots more than us,
But they don't know all things, -
'Cause we ketch 'em, lots o' times,
Even on little small things.

One time Winnie ask' her Ma,
At the winder, sewin',...

You in the hammock; and I, near by,
Was trying to read, and to swing you, too;
And the green of the sward was so kind to the eye,
And the shade of the maples so cool and blue,...

O in the depths of midnight
What fancies haunt the brain!
When even the sigh of the sleeper
Sounds like a sob of pain.

A sense of awe and of wonder
I may never well define, -...

I

In the evening of our days,
When the first far stars above
Glimmer dimmer, through the haze,
Than the dewy eyes of love,
Shall we mournfully revert
To the vanished morns and Mays...

In the heart of June, love,
You and I together,
On from dawn till noon, love,
Laughing with the weather;
Blending both our souls, love,
In the selfsame tune,
Drinking all life holds, love,...

There is a princess in the South
About whose beauty rumors hum
Like honey-bees about the mouth
Of roses dewdrops falter from;
And O her hair is like the fine
Clear amber of a jostled wine...

Iry an' Billy an' Jo! -
Iry an' Billy's the boys,
An' Jo's their dog, you know, -
Their pictures took all in a row.
Bet they kin kick up a noise -
Iry and Billy, the boys,...

I can't extend to every friend
In need a helping hand -
No matter though I wish it so,
'Tis not as Fortune planned;
But haply may I fancy they
Are men of different stripe...

"When it's got to be," - like! always say,
As I notice the years whiz past,
And know each day is a yesterday,
When we size it up, at last, -
Same as I said when my boyhood went...

(Grandfather, musing.)


In childish days! O memory,
You bring such curious things to me! -
Laughs to the lip - tears to the eye,
In looking on the gifts that lie...

Bad Boy's Version.

Tell you a story - an' it's a fac': -
Wunst wuz a little boy, name wuz Jack,
An' he had sword an' buckle an' strap
Maked of gold, an' a "'visibul cap;"...

His daily, nightly task is o'er -
He leans above his desk no more.

His pencil and his pen say not
One further word of gracious thought.

All silent is his voice, yet clear...

Jap Miller down at Martinsville's the blamedest feller yit!
When he starts in a-talkin' other folks is apt to quit! -
'Pears like that mouth o' his'n wuz n't made fer nuthin' else...

He was jes a plain ever'-day, all-round kind of a jour.,
Consumpted-Iookin' - but la!
The jokeiest, wittiest, story-tellin', song-singin', laughin'est, jolliest
Feller you ever saw!...

"Write me a rhyme of the present time".
And the poet took his pen
And wrote such lines as the miser minds
Hide in the hearts of men.

He grew enthused, as the poets used...