Songs, Merry and Sad | Page 5

will know the sweet things said
By him who swings
And ducks and dips his crested head
And sings and sings.
They are obedient to their blood,
Nor ask a sign,
Save buoyant air and swelling bud,
At hands divine,
But choose, each in the barren wood,
His valentine.
In caution's maze they never wait
Until they die;
They flock the season's open gate
Ere time steals by.
Love, shall we see and imitate,
You, love, and I?
A Photograph
When in this room I turn in pondering pace
And find thine eyes upon
me where I stand,
Led on, as by Enemo's silken strand,
I come and
gaze and gaze upon thy face.

Framed round by silence, poised on pearl-white grace
Of curving
throat, too sweet for beaded band,
It seems as if some wizard's magic
wand
Had wrought thee for the love of all the race.
Dear face, that will not turn about to see
The tulips, glorying in the
casement sun,
Or, other days, the drizzled raindrops run
Down the damp walls, but follow only me,
Would that Pygmalion's
goddess might be won
To change this lifeless image into thee!
Jesse Covington
If I have had some merry times
In roaming up and down the earth,

Have made some happy-hearted rhymes
And had my brimming share
of mirth,
And if this song should live in fame
When my brief day is
dead and gone,
Let it recall with mine the name
Of old man Jesse
Covington.
Let it recall his waggish heart --
Yeke-hey, yeke-hey,
hey-diddle-diddle --
When, while the fire-logs fell apart,
He
snatched the bow across his fiddle,
And looked on, with his eyes half
shut,
Which meant his soul was wild with fun,
At our mad capers
through the hut
Of old man Jesse Covington.
For all the thrilling tales he told,
For all the tunes the fiddle knew,

For all the glorious nights of old
We boys and he have rollicked
through,
For laughter all unknown to wealth
That roared responsive
to a pun,
A hale, ripe age and ruddy health
To old man Jesse
Covington!
An Idyl
Upon a gnarly, knotty limb
That fought the current's crest,
Where
shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim,
Wild wasps had glued their
nest.

And in a sprawling cypress' grot,
Sheltered and safe from flood,

Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot
To shape his house of mud.
In a warm crevice of the bark
A basking scorpion clung,
With
bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes
And yellow, twinkling tongue.
A lunging trout flashed in the sun,
To do some petty slaughter,
And
set the spiders all a-run
On little stilts of water.
Toward noon upon the swamp there stole
A deep, cathedral hush,

Save where, from sun-splocht bough and bole,
Sweet thrush replied
to thrush.
An angler came to cast his fly
Beneath a baffling tree.
I smiled,
when I had caught his eye,
And he smiled back at me.
When stretched beside a shady elm
I watched the dozy heat,
Nature
was moving in her realm,
For I could hear her feet.
Home Songs
The little loves and sorrows are my song:
The leafy lanes and
birthsteads of my sires,
Where memory broods by winter's evening
fires
O'er oft-told joys, and ghosts of ancient wrong;
The little cares
and carols that belong
To home-hearts, and old rustic lutes and lyres,

And spreading acres, where calm-eyed desires
Wake with the dawn,
unfevered, fair, and strong.
If words of mine might lull the bairn to sleep,
And tell the meaning in
a mother's eyes;
Might counsel love, and teach their eyes to weep

Who, o'er their dead, question unanswering skies,
More worth than
legions in the dust of strife,
Time, looking back at last, should count
my life.
M. W. Ransom

(Died October 8, 1904)
For him, who in a hundred battles stood
Scorning the cannon's mouth,

Grimy with flame and red with foeman's blood,
For thy sweet sake,
O South;
Who, wise as brave, yielded his conquered sword
At a vain war's
surcease,
And spoke, thy champion still, the statesman's word
In the
calm halls of peace;
Who pressed the ruddy wine to thy faint lips,
Where thy torn body
lay,
And saw afar time's white in-sailing ships
Bringing a happier
day:
Oh, mourn for him, dear land that gave him birth!
Bow low thy
sorrowing head!
Let thy seared leaves fall silent on the earth

Whereunder he lies dead!
In field and hall, in valor and in grace,
In wisdom's livery,
Gentle
and brave, he moved with knightly pace,
A worthy son of thee!
Protest
Oh, I am weary, weary, weary
Of Pan and oaten quills
And little
songs that, from the dictionary,
Learn lore of streams and hills,
Of
studied laughter, mocking what is merry,
And calculated thrills!
Are we grown old and past the time of singing?
Is ardor quenched in
art
Till art is but a formal figure, bringing
A money-measured heart,

Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing
Its bells about the
mart?
The race moves on, and leaves no wildernesses
Where rugged voices
cry;
It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses
The souls of
men who die,
And step by even step its rank progresses,
An army
marshalled by.

If it be better so, that Babel noises,
Losing all course and ken,
And
grief that wails and gladness that rejoices
Should never