Category: Omaha Daily Bee

From the Omaha Daily Bee, September 18, 1914.

They sat upon a boulder
    That looked toward the sea.
The wild waves washed the pebbly beach;
    The gulls dipped gracefully
To catch the flying, silvery spray,
    But nature had no power
With all her charms to draw one glance
    In this most solemn hour.
They noted not the glorious sun,
    The bright and cloudless skies,
But found a source of pure delight
    Within each other’s eyes.
The minutes and the hours flew by,
    And still they sat alone.
He held her slender fingers
    Tightly clasped within his own.
The sun shone on; the waves rolled high,
    Just as they did before,
But naught saw they of light or shade
    Or heard the ocean’s roar.
At last he whispered, “Will you be
    My love, my bride, my wife,
And walk together hand in hand
    Along the road of life?”
She laid her head upon his breast,
    In manner shy, demure;
Then raised her melting glance to his,
    And softly murmured, “Sure.”

From the Omaha Daily Bee, April 21, 1914.

Nature is no distant dame
    All aloofness in her mien;
Mistress Nature is the same
    Unto peasant, unto queen—
Yea, the sun of summer sweet
    Shuttered from a sheltered crown
Kisses little children’s feet
    That are bravely bare and brown.

They who seek her need not fare
    Over dim, mysterious hills;
Always she is sitting there
    On our dusty window sills.
When the traffic hesitates
    Where the human river pours
Nature creeps through city gates
    Knocking at our city doors.

Nature plants courageous grass
    In the cobbled market place
Where the weary thousands pass
    Bent of form and sad of face.
She comes creeping, creeping so
    From the country unawares,
With her roses in a row
    And her ivy on the stairs.

Only just a little way,
    Alley first and avenue,
Out a road of sturdy clay
    Mistress Nature beckons you.
Very near the busy mart,
    Very near the huts of men,
Nature waits with merry heart—
    Let her make you glad again.