From the Omaha Daily Bee, July 31, 1914. By William F. Kirk.
Wondrous dream love
Don’t forget me.
Don’t it seem, love
Like you’ve met me?
I’m so lonely
O’er your photo
If I only
Knew where to go to.
I have kissed
Your cheeks so pink,
But they taste
Like printer’s ink.
If I knew
Just where to go
I’d love you
And not your photo.
From the Newark Evening Star, July 30, 1914. By Miriam Teichner.
Dad and mother’s picture, honeymooning at Niagara Falls;
Routed from the trunk among the rags and scraps and camphor balls.
Mother’s slender, fair, beguiling;
Father’s straight and proud and smiling,
Ah, the memories and fancies that the faded print recalls!
Mother’s dressed in curious fashion; tiny bonnet, basque of plaid;
Father, too, is wondrous strangely, yes, astonishingly clad.
Seated, she; behind her standing,
Trying hard to look commanding,
Father is, and both are scarcely more than children, lass and lad.
Smiling lovers of the picture much has come to make you sad;
Faces both are lined and thinner since you mother are and dad.
Girl and boy so fair and slender,
How the heart grows warm and tender
Just to think of all the glowing hopes and fancies that you had.
From the Newark Evening Star, July 29, 1914. By Rudyard Kipling.
If we knew the cares and trials,
Knew the efforts all in vain,
And the bitter disappointment,
Understood the loss and gain—
Would the grim eternal roughness
Seem—I wonder—just the same;
Should we help where now we hinder,
She we pity where we blame?
Ah! We judge each other harshly,
Knowing not life’s hidden force—
Knowing not the fount of action
Is less turbid at its source;
Seeing not amid the evil
All the golden grains of good;
And we’d love each other better
If we only understood.
Could we judge all deeds by motives
That surround each other’s lives,
See the naked heart and spirit,
Know what spur the action gives,
Often we would find it better
Just to judge all actions good;
We should love each other better
If we only understood.
From The Birmingham Age Herald, July 28, 1914. By Robert Louis Stevenson.
Dear lady, tapping at your door
Some little verses stand,
And beg on this auspicious day
To come and kiss your hand.
Their syllables all counted right,
Their rhymes each in its place,
Like birthday children at the door,
They wait to see your face.
Rise, lady, rise and let them in;
Fresh from the fairy shore,
They bring you things you wish to have,
Each in its pinafore.
For they have been to Wishing Land
This morning in the dew,
And all your dearest wishes bring—
All granted—home to you.
What these may be they would not tell
And could not if they would;
They take the packets sealed to you
As trusty servants should.
But there was one that looked like Love,
And one that smelt of Health,
And one that had a jingling sound—
I fancy it was Wealth.
Ah well, they are but wishes; still
O lady fair, for you,
I know that all you wish is kind,
O pray it all come true.
From the Omaha Daily Bee, July 27, 1914. By Bayoll Ne Trele.
A summer wood,
A vagrant breeze,
A writing tablet
On my knees;
A rhythmic swaying
Of the boughs,
An anxious knitting
Of my brows;
A hundred things
With meaning fraught,
Yet not one single thought.
A seat of rock,
A rug of moss,
A ceiling where
Green branches toss;
A bird voice calls
From some far nook,
A leaf spins downward
To the brook.
A crackling noise,
A cow! I flee—
The beast is headed straight for me.
My seat of rock,
My ceiling green
Has just been changed—
There’s a fence between;
And on that rock
Whence I did scud
There stands the cow
And chews her cud.
With placid eye
She looks me o’er,
A-standing where
I sat before,
And seems to say
O you high brow
I wonder who’s
The poet now.
From the Evening Star, July 26, 1914. By Philander Johnson.
Dear Editor:
I wish to call attention to the fact
That while in most respects your news is liberal an’ exact,
There’s something you are missin’. I am wonderin’ how you could
Be so indifferent to our influential neighborhood!
You write about the contests on the turf or in the ring,
But, up to now, your sportin’ page has never said a thing
About the mighty battle where two giants was arrayed;
I mean the game of checkers me an’ Ezry Slocum played.
’Twas him as sent the challenge. Leastways, he was heard to say
That he could beat Si Perkins playin’ checkers any day.
My last name bein’ Perkins an’ my fust name bein’ Si,
Of course, I couldn’t pass the base insinuation by.
Although our feelin’s was intense, our speech was never rude.
We calmly met the gaze of the assembled multitude
That stood on barrels an’ on crates an’ even on the shelves
To see how me an’ Ezry Slocum would acquit ourselves.
I made a swift attack an’ jumped him all along the line.
I romped around his king row purty much like it was mine.
Oh, you talk about your polo or your golf or your base ball!
I want to say the game that we put up ‘ud beat ‘em all!
I am writin’ to remind you that in this enlightened age
The public will take notice, if your valued sportin’ page
Neglects to mention who has riz up to fame so high—
The Checker Cyclone; which the same is
Yours sincerely,
Si.
From the Harrisburg Telegraph, July 25, 1914. By Wing Dinger.
Why is it that this time of year
With such good things to eat,
We’re stopped from eating all we want
By the excessive heat.
Take chicken corn pie, say, than which
A better dish there’s not.
But, gee, you can’t eat all you want,
Because it is too hot.
Fresh vegetables of all kinds
Are thrown into the pot,
But when they’re served, though we would like
To eat them, it’s too hot.
For months I’ve hungered for fresh things—
Green corn and beans and such—
They’re here now, but it is so hot
I can’t eat very much.
From the Rock Island Argus, July 24, 1914. By Henry Howland.
Oh, smiling lady, your jewels flash,
Your furs are rich and your eyes are bright,
With a lavish hand you are spending cash,
You know no want and your heart is light;
You look so glad and you seem so free
From the cares that worrying people know
That I wonder, seeing your ecstasy,
Who was paying your bills a year ago.
Perhaps he lingers alone somewhere,
Or another may bring him gladness now;
The lines that are drawn by the hand of Care
May be deeply etched in his aching brow;
Remorse may gnaw at his lonely heart,
Or another may hear him whisper low;
But you, made up with consummate art—
Who was paying your bills a year ago?
You do not wail o’er the cost of things,
Whatever your fancy craves you take;
Your hands are laden with flashing rings
And your fingers never from toiling ache;
You give no thought to the ones who shrink
Where a chill creeps in when the mad winds blow;
Your furs are soft and your cheeks are pink;
Who was paying your bills a year ago?
Oh, lady fair, in another year
You may wonder how, in your careless pride
You forgot to pause and declined to hear
The helpless who in their sadness cried;
You may sit alone where the light is dim
And mourn the fate that has brought you low,
As you think sometimes with a pang of him
Who was paying your bills a year ago.
From the Rock Island Argus, July 23, 1914.
His head was bald and wrinkles hung
In folds beneath his chin;
But, fancying his look was young,
He drew his waist-band in.
His shoulders drooped, his step was slow,
His sight was growing dim;
He thought the knowledge of it, though,
Belonged alone to him.
I did not tell him that I knew,
Nor hint that I could see;
It may be that some morning you
Will be as kind to me.
From the Newark Evening Star, July 22, 1914. By Chart Pitt.
The buoy-bell’s lone challenge wakes a dream of long ago,
When the happy sound of church bells rang out across the snow.
It sounds its sullen warning, o’er the murmur of the reef,
Where heartless tides are sobbing, like a lost-soul grief.
There was song and happy laughter, and the glint of love-lit eyes,
Now listless snow is falling from the steel-gray Arctic skies.
The angry surf is booming on the stubborn rock-bound shore,
While the memory ship is drifting to the happy days of yore.
The Northern wolf is calling from the headland’s wind-swept height.
Hark! He sounds the call of hunger, to curse the Arctic night.
The time-worn year is dying and the new waits at the door,
The beacon light is blinking from the shadows of the shore.
The mystic North is sleeping ‘neath the blanket of the snows,
But weary hearts are dreaming of the fragrant Southern rose.
The wild surf sounds its challenge and the shore flings back reply—
The world is bound in chains of war, ‘neath the dreary Arctic sky.