Category: The Times Dispatch

From The Times Dispatch, April 13, 1914. By Thomas Lomax Hunter.

No doubt the watch dog pleases to perfection
Those timid souls who need a dog’s protection.
I’d rather sleep ‘mid perils and dismay
Than hear, all night, a watch dog’s honest bay.
I had a watch dog once. When it grew dark
The faithful creature started in to bark,
Deep, steady basso barks that never ceased
Until Aurora reddened in the east.
Ah, many a night and oft I’ve lain awake
And heard that brave dog barking for my sake,
And wished some burglar kind would come and shoot,
Stab, poison, brain, and massacre the brute.
I soon found out that prowling thieves regard
A deep-mouthed canine barking in a yard
As favoring very much their occupation;
It drowns the noise of their operation.
I wished that dog upon a friend of mine
Who yearned to be the ward of some canine.
I think a dog is scarcely worth his keep
When all that he can guard against is sleep.

From The Times Dispatch, March 26, 1914. By Thomas Lomax Hunter.

My friend, because you didn’t get
    The public office that you sought,
Don’t holler fraud. Don’t squeal and fret.
    Don’t shout aloud that votes were bought.

Smile and look pleasant. That’s the plan.
    Don’t talk about the “campaign lie.”
Say, “What most helped that Other Man
    Was that he got more votes than I.”

If you are gracious and discreet,
    And never whimper or complain,
You will make profit of defeat,
    And get there when you run again.

The squealer never can come back,
    Because, you see, the few votes more
That he was plainly shown to lack,
    He cannot win by getting sore.

No matter what the game you play,
    No matter what the race you run,
The loser should be brave and gay.
    This spirit gives the game its fun.

You cannot always win, but you
    Howe’er the wheel of fortune spins,
Can give your vanquisher his due
    And cry, “Hurrah! The best man wins!”

In him the people most delight
    (Next to the hero with his fame),
Who, having fought his utmost fight
    Now takes his beating gay and game.

Instinctively, we feel that he
    Whose courage ‘neath no beating fell,
Will some day win the victory,
    And wear it modestly and well.

Then just because the battle’s lost
    Don’t lose your self-control also.
To conquer self at any cost
    Takes half the victory from the foe.

Shall people say when you pass by,
    “There goes that sorehead bawler out,”
Or slap you on the back and cry,
    “I hope you’ll win next time, old scout?”

From The Times Dispatch, March 24, 1914. By Thomas Lomax Hunter.

Old Doctor Dopem is a quack
Who publishes an almanac,
And manufactures Dopem’s Pills
(Sure cure for fifty-seven ills!)
Now I, by some unlucky chance
Through Dopem’s Almanac did glance—
Until that hour my health was sound
As any man’s for miles around.
Before I’d read the booklet through
My wonder and my terror grew,
Till all I hoped was to be spared
A few more days to be prepared.
I read the symptoms of disease
And cried, “Why, I have all of these!”
It said, “If you feel tired at night,
And sleepy, with no appetite
When you’ve consumed a hearty meal,
And sorter sluggish—if you feel
When you are cold, a strong desire
To get up closer to the fire,
You’ve got it brother!—but there’s hope!
Take Dopem’s Sanitary Dope!
(See what Miss Mugg, of Saginaw,
Says D. S. D. did for her paw.)”
It said, “If with a pain you moan
When stricken on your crazy bone;
If you get peeved and speak with scorn
When someone camps upon your corn,
Your nerves are in a fearful state!
Take D. S. D., ’tis death to wait.”
As of each new disease I read,
I felt myself grow cold with dread,
Till I thought Dopem, at the end,
My only hope, my only friend.
Then I reflected that I took
All my diseases from his book,
And thought I’d rather have the bliss
Of my old ignorance than this,
For one who needs a book to tell
He’s sick is just as good as well.

From The Times Dispatch, March 17, 1914. By Thomas Lomax Hunter.

“Come and go a-journeying and see the world,” you cry,
    “Sixty miles an hour on a flying Pullman whirled.
See the great strange cities and their peoples as we fly.
    Would you stay forever here and never see the world?”

Come with me a-walking on the path beside the brook;
    There are many wonders there if you will pause to see;
Elfin things and faery, if you will stop to look.
    If you would really see the world, come and walk with me.

Breathe the tonic odor of the darkling piney woods.
    Search beneath the needles where the first arbutus blows.
Come on Pan a-brooding in his earliest vernal mood,
    Hidden in the rushes where the frolic streamlet flows.

Come, and I will show you where the merry chipmunks dwell;
    Where the timid wood-birds build that do not flock with man;
And where the hermit woodchuck has dug his secret cell,
    And all the shy Arcadians who hear the pipes of Pan.

“Come,” you cry, “and see the world across the Seven Seas,
    The pyramids and Palestine and ancient Greece and Rome.”
But why should I go seeking those when I have ever these
    Enchantments and adventures within a mile of home?

Here I only have to wait, the seasons come to me;
    Flying each its colors and bugled by its birds.
What is there more wonderful or fair across the sea
    That I should go a-hurrying with the harried tourist herds?

While you have fled a thousand miles in a touring car,
    I have just been tramping through the hills and meadows near.
You have seen the wonders of a fleeting world and far,
    But I have been a-walking and seen my world right here.

From The Times Dispatch, March 16, 1914. By Thomas Lomax Hunter.

The peacock makes the grandest show
And shine of all the birds I know.
The sunlight glints upon his breast
In iridescent loveliness.
His great tail coverts, purple-eyed,
Are just the livery of pride.
He is the dandy and the dude
Of the entire barnyard brood.
He hasn’t got a single duty
Except to be a thing of beauty,
And this, because of gorgeous dress,
He does with wonderful success.
But it is better to be plain
Than idle, insolent and vain,
And if to this bright bird we turn
A useful lesson we may learn.
The overdressed too oft possess
But very little more than dress,
And only sit around and brood
On their supernal pulchritude,
And are in all the winds and weathers
Forever preening up their feathers.
’Tis not to them that we would go
For wit or wisdom—oh, dear no!
Nor yet for help to right our wrong,
Nor yet for poetry or song.
Their minds have mastered one device:
The art of always looking nice,
Curled, scented, tinted, creased and pressed,
And dressed—yes, super-ultra dressed.
It is not to these “joys forever”
That we must look for high endeavor.
They have no idea worth our while;
Just dumb idolatry of style.
And this reminds us it is time
To point the moral of this rhyme:
You’d think the peacock should be king
Of birds until you hear him sing.

From The Times Dispatch, February 25, 1914. By Thomas Lomax Hunter.

Grim, inscrutable wise old Sphinx,
    Halfway hid in the desert sands;
Could we know what it knows and thinks,
    Understand as it understands,
The answer would be in our hands,
    That sages hint and seers foretell.
Knowing, but silent, there it stands—
    What is the riddle it keeps so well?

Grim, inscrutable, wise old Sphinx,
    Old and wise when the world was young;
We are weary of nods and winks,
    And guesses from every witless tongue,
Merest crumbs to the starving flung.
    Tell us something truly, tell
What was the song the Sirens sung?
    What is the riddle you keep so well?

What was the meaning of Memnon’s hall?
    What was hidden from mortal eyes
In Isis’s temple behind the veil,
    To heed and hark our sacrifice?
What are all of the mysteries
    Within whose fearsome dark we dwell?
Why do the gods make no replies?
    What is the riddle you keep so well?

Sphinx, inscrutable, scornful, wise,
    (Telling naught, for there is naught to tell)
Mysteries are but woven lies—
    This is the riddle you keep so well.