From the Richmond Times Dispatch, July 18, 1915. By Henry van Dyke.
What is Fortune, what is Fame?
Futile gold and phantom name,
Riches buried in a cave,
Glory written on a grave.
What is Friendship? Something deep
That the heart can spend and keep:
Wealth that greatens while we give,
Praise that heartens us to live.
Come, my friend, and let us prove
Life’s true talisman is love!
By this charm we shall elude
Poverty and solitude.
From the Richmond Times Dispatch, July 15, 1915.
When barons bold at Runnymede
Laid down the law to England’s King,
The Magna Charta there decreed
Was not meant liberty to bring.
Of course, the barons spread this tale,
But they did that to cop the kale.
The fact is barons in that day
Had found their purses waxing slim,
And made the King agree to pay
Whene’er they turned a trick for him.
The other rules they did indite
Were meant to make the thing sound right.
From the Richmond Times Dispatch, July 9, 1915. By Byron.
Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.
What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?
’Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled.
Then away with all such from the head that is hoary—
What care I for wreaths that can only give glory?
Oh, Fame! If I ever took delight in thy praises,
’Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
There chiefly I saw thee, there only I found thee;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
When it sparkled o’er aught that was bright in my story
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.
From the Richmond Times Dispatch, July 2, 1915.
When she gave him a smile—
As she did in the dance—
It was not done in guile,
Nor with wish to enhance
His burning affection;
But the fact was, it had
That effect, just the same,
And the poor foolish lad
Was so scorched by love’s flame
He moped in dejection.
Which perceiving, she felt
She had played the wrong part,
And then felt pity melt
To its kin in her heart—
A fitting location.
So this damsel and swain
Tuned their lives to Love’s lays,
And walked down Lover’s Lane
For the rest of their days—
Grief got a vacation!
From the Richmond Times Dispatch, June 30, 1915.
“Oh, why should the spirit
Of mortal be proud?”
The male of the species
Is never allowed
By the once gentler sex
To voice his belief—
Which you’ll own well enough
Accounts for his grief.
No, this age deals a blow
To man, in his pride;
He’s wisest when meekest—
That can’t be denied.
From the Richmond Times Dispatch, June 2, 1915. By Innes Randolph.
[The following verses, which were set to music, and formed one of the favorite songs of the generation now nearly gone, were written almost immediately after the close of the Civil War, when the South was in the throes of reconstruction, and when an oath of allegiance and consequent pardon were prerequisite to the rights of citizenship.]
Oh, I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am;
For this “fair Land of Freedom”
I don’t care a dam.
I’m glad I fit against it—
I only wish we’d won,
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I’ve done.
I hates the Constitution,
This great Republic, too;
I hates the Freedmen’s Buro,
In uniforms of blue.
I hates the nasty eagle,
With all his brag and fuss;
The lyin’ thievin’ Yankees,
I hates ‘em wuss and wuss.
I hates the Yankee Nation
And everything they do;
I hates the Declaration
Of Independence, too.
I hates the glorious Union,
’Tis dripping with our blood;
I hates the striped banner—
I fit it all I could.
I followed old Mars’ Robert
For four year, near about,
Got wounded in three places,
And starved at Pint Lookout.
I cotched the roomatism
A-campin’ in the snow,
But I killed a chance of Yankees—
I’d like to kill some mo’.
Three hundred thousand Yankees
Is stiff in Southern dust;
We got three hundred thousand
Before they conquered us.
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot;
I wish it was three millions
Instead of what we got.
I can’t take up my musket
And fight ‘em now no more,
But I ain’t agoin’ to love ‘em,
Now that is sartin sure.
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am;
I won’t be reconstructed
And I don’t care a dam.
From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 20, 1915.
Pretty little Polly lacks
The intellectual bent—
In fact, for culture and the like
She wouldn’t give a cent.
And at the highbrow festivals
She wonders what is meant.
But pretty Polly dances like
A dainty woodland sprite,
And e’en to watch her elfish grace
Is pure unmixed delight.
And Polly’s lips are scarlet buds,
Her neck is milky white.
What does little Polly care
That no one thinks her wise?
Why, wisdom doesn’t stand a chance
When she employs her eyes,
And each discerning man in sight
To do her bidding flies.
From the Richmond Times Dispatch, May 15, 1915.
There are lots of simple pleasures,
Caught in nature’s ebb and flow,
That will multiply life’s treasures,
If your heart’s attuned to know;
There is one joymaker granted
Quite the sweetest ever found—
When the green things you have planted
Show their heads above the ground.
There are sunsets, limned with glories
By the Master Artist’s brush,
And at morn the soft love stories
Of the mocking bird and thrush.
There are streams that seem enchanted,
There are beauties all around—
And just now the hopes you’ve planted
Spring in rapture from the ground.