ON AN EIGHTIETH BIRTH-DAY.
[Lines written to Mrs. Wm. D. Grant, on celebrating her eightieth anniversary, February 22, 1919. There are eighty lines in the poem, one for each year, and all who know Mrs. Grant, young at four-score, will recognize the fidelity of the picture drawn.]
What, eighty! Eighty what, pray madam?
Tell this benighted son of Adam?
If eighty years, then Old Four-score
From youth has never borrowed more.
Though doubly fair, I must, in rhyme,
Say this-you've cheated Father Time,
For, on your soft, unchequered brow,
I find no tracks to mark his plow.
Once more I look and-on my life!-
His wisdom's there, but not his scythe.
If eighty's there, I cannot gage
Its proof by any test of age.
Despite the calendar, 'tis plain
That gentle June is here again,
Or else her sun hath never set
And all her roses linger yet.
To figure eighty-this we can't.
We're from Missouri, Lady Grant.
Methinks from that sweet face of thine
Scarce more than forty suns can shine
If eighty, then, pray, at your pleasure,
Suggest to us the baffling measure.
"Tis but an irony of fate's
To vex us with this maze of dates
The irksome task my muse encumbers
To think of one like thee in numbers!-
If numbers unto thee belong,
They're music's, softly set to song.
If Time's sole measure, then, be worth,
Thou art an ancient of the earth.
This is the truth-if e'er I told it-
Twice eighty years can hardly hold it.
Nay more:-to speak in outline rough-
Methuselah's age is not enough.
Soft benedictions from thy hands
Have sparkled like the seaside sands;
Thy life, like some sweet story, reads-
A fairy wonder-book of deeds
Time, e'en its bare recital, bars
To tell it all would tax the stars.
Faith, goodness, love-to measure these
We must not look for years but seas;
These, o'er thy spirit's tranquil calm,
Have wreathed sweet childhood's golden charm. Here's to thy health! Bright days galore,
Till eighty grows to eighty more.
Long may you live, to cheer, to bless,
This bleak world with thy loveliness,
To make life's roses round us cling
Till we forget all, all but spring,
To bloom right here, in old Atlant'-
The twentieth century's century plant.
February 22, 1919.
TO AN OLD FRIEND: MRS. JOSEPH H. MORGAN.
Dear friend: your tuneful roundelay
Has come to hand. Well, I must say
That, in the art of making verse,
Full many a bard has written worse,
But, though I might improve your meter,
I could not make your English sweeter,
Yes, on this day we twain were born-
But you a rose, I just a thorn.
Both, on this day, first saw the light-
But you a queen, I just a knight.
You came to cheer the world, a lark;
I came, alas, to make it dark.
In fortune's lot, 'tis yours to reign
While I must fight upon the plain.
Still, let me here and now declare,
Should harm e'er come to Lady Fair-
Or she but call-a thorn, perchance,
May blossom into Knighthood's lance,
With which-though dragons were my foes-
I'd rescue our endangered rose.
Ah, then, forsooth, it would be seen
How quickly I could serve the queen.
If my dead muse would let me sing,
I would to thee a garland bring
Meet for thy brow, aye, put to blush
The merriest mocking-bird or thrush
And this, thy birthday, I would hail
With greetings from a knight-in-gale.
But fate the poet's wing has crushed
My harp, like Tara's now, is hushed.
From high Olympus, at thy birth,
Minerva must have stooped to earth,
And, on Apollo's tuneful lyre,
Whispered thy natal name: Sophia;
To which, from Dixie's heraldry,
Our gentle Southland joined a Lee.
The one, from far-off Grecian skies,
Brought wisdom's fire to make thee wise.
The other, from thy birth-land, gave
Virtue's true heart to make thee brave.
But, madam, e'en this double dower
Is taxed to foster such a flower.
It keeps one guessing to divine
How nature made these charms combine,
And, though I try my utmost skill,
'Tis but, alas, to wonder still.
Here's to thy health. Till full four-score
Of birth-days come, with twenty more,
To round the hundred, may you still,
Without a crutch, skip round at will,
In every fiber, hale and hearty,
The youngest at your birthday party,
And, though my joints be stiff as lumber,
May I be one among the number.
Life needs your smile, your wit, your rhyme,
To help it while away the time;
For dull would be this world of ours
Without the cheer it gets from flowers.
Long may those charms of thine, so rare, Be fostered with a shepherd's care. February 9, 1915.
[Lines written in the album of my private secretary, Miss Louise Love, in the Department of Archives and History.]
If asked why sits so young a maid
At History's ancient portals,
I'll tell you why, for Love, 'tis said,
Is one of the immortals.
But History's pen must speak the truth
Howe'er the blood may tingle-
Now, to retain immortal youth,
You must, alas, stay single.
For, should you ever chance to wed,
Pray, how will you arrange it--
If, with your name, you lose your head,
Be careful how you change it.
[Lines dedicated to Mrs. J. E. Hays, of Montezuma, Ga., President of the Georgia Federation of Women's Clubs.]
It was at the big state conference, in the famous year 'fourteen,
When the Daughters met in Macon--the D. A. R.'s I mean-
She rose to read the minutes, with the look of one resigned,
To a sort of task for Hercules, 'twas a mountain on her mind;
It awoke compassion tender, for the troubled look she wore
Sang out: "one sweetly solemn thought comes to me o'er and o'er."
Well, the starting out was dirge-like, to the funeral march of Saul
But it ended in a break-down, with Betsy at the ball.
Something I've forgotten now-with laughter made her shake,
Till the earth around the building seemed to tremble in a quake.
She essayed in vain to quell it, she tried her best to frown,
But, like Banquo's ghost in Scotland, her laughter wouldn't down.
It almost split the conference, but it wasn't like the schism Which wrecked the old ship, Synod, on the Shorter Catechism, 'Twas a thousand times more orthodox, 'twas wholesome through and through
There was more of concord in it—more of the gospel, too;
That explosion, on life's journey, has lightened many a mile
Had it happened in a graveyard, 'twould have made the tombstones
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