You entered my life in a casual way,
And saw at a glance what I needed;
There were others who passed me or met me each day,
But never a one of them heeded.
Perhaps you were thinking of other folks more,
Or chance simply seemed to decree it;
I know there were many such chances before,
But the others--well, they didn't see it.
You said just the thing that I wished you would say,
And you made me believe that you meant it;
I held up my head in the old gallant way,
And resolved you should never repent it.
There are times when encouragement means such a lot,
And a word is enough to convey it;
There were others who could have, as easy as not--
But, just the same, they didn't say it.
There may have been someone who could have done more
To help me along, though I doubt it;
What I needed was cheering, and always before
THey had let me plod onward without it.
You helped to refashion the dream of my heart,
And made me turn eagerly to it;
There were others who might have (I question that part)--
But, after all, they didn't do it!
By - Grace Stricker Dawson
If I had known what trouble you were bearing;
What griefs were in the silence of your face;
I would have been more gentle, and more caring,
And tried to give you gladness for a space.
I would have brought more warmth into the place,
If I had known.
If I had known what thoughts despairing drew you;
(Why do we never try to understand?)
I would have lent a little friendship to you,
And slipped my hand within your hand,
And made your stay more pleasant in the land,
If I had known.
By - Mary Carolyn Davies
If you should go before me, dear, walk slowly
Down the ways of death, well-worn and wide,
For I would want to overtake you quickly
And seek the journey's ending by your side.
I would be so forlorn not to descry you
Down some shining highroad when I came;
Walk slowly, ear, and often look behind you
And pause to hear if someone calls your name.
By - Adelaide Love
Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the Hand above?
A woman's heart, and a woman's life--
And a woman's wonderful love.
Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing
As a child might ask for a toy?
Demanding what others have died to win,
With the reckless dash of a boy.
You have written my lesson of duty out;
Manlike, you have questioned me.
Now stand at the bar of my woman's soul
Until I shall question thee.
You require your mutton shall be always hot,
your socks and your shirt be whole;
I require your heart to be true as God's stars
And as pure as His heaven your soul.
You require a cook for your mutton and beef,
I require a far greater thing;
A seamstress you're wanting for socks and shirts--
I look for a man and a king.
A king for the beautiful realm called Home,
And a man that his Maker, God,
Shall look upon as He did on the first
And say: "It is very good"
I am fair and young, but the rose may fade
From my soft young cheek one day;
Will you love me then 'mid the falling leaves,
As you did 'mong the blossoms of May?
Is your heart an ocean so strong and deep,
I may launch my all on its tide?
A loving woman finds heaven or hell
On the day she is made a bride.
I require all things that are grand and true,
All things that a man should be;
If you give this all, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me.
If you cannot be this, a laundress and cook
You can hire and little to pay;
But a woman's heart and a woman's life
Are not to be won that way.
By – Lena Lathrop
When I have a house....as I sometime may....
I'll suit my fancy in every way.
I'll fill it with things that have caught my eye
In drifting from Iceland to Molokai
It won't be correct or in period style,
But....oh, I've thought for a long, long while
Of all the corners and all the nooks,
Of all the bookshelves and all the nooks,
The great big table, the deep, soft chairs,
And the Chinese rug at the foot of the stairs;
It's an old, old rug from far Chow Wan
That a Chinese princess once walked on.
My house will stand on the side of a hill
By a slow, broad river, deep and still,
With a tall lone pine on a guard near by
Where the birds can sing and the stormwinds cry.
A flagstone walk with lazy curves
Will lead to the door where a Pan's head serves
As a knocker there like a vibrant drum
To let me know that a friend has come;
And the door will squeak as I swing it wide
To welcome you to the cheer inside
For I'll have good friends who can sit and chat
Or simply sit, when it comes to that,
By the fireplace where the fir logs blaze
And the smoke rolls up in a weaving haze.
I'll want a woodbox, scarred and rough,
For leaves and bark and odorous stuff
Like resinous knots and cones and gums
To chuck on the flames when winter comes;
And I hope a cricket will stay around,
For I love its creaky, lonesome sound.
There'll be driftwood powder to burn on logs,
And a shaggy rug for a couple of dogs--
Boreas, winner of prize and cup,
And Mickey, a lovable gutter pup.
Thoroughbreds, both of them, right from the start,
One by breeding, the other by heart.
There are times when only a dog will do
For a friend--when you're beaten, sick and blue,
And the world's all wrong; for he won't care
If you break and cry, or grouch and swear;
For he'll let you know as he licks your hands
That he's downright sorry--and understands.
I'll have on a bench a box inlaid
With dragon-plagues of milk-white jade
To hold my own particular brand
Of cigarettes brought from the Pharoah's land.
With a cloisonne bowl on a lizard's skin
To flick my cigarette ashes in,
And a swuat blue jar for a certain blend
Of pipe tobacco. I'll have to send
To a quaint old chap I chanced to meet
In his fusty shop on a London street.
A long, low shelf of teak will hold
My best-loved books in leather and gold,
While magazines lie on a bowlegged stand
In a polyglot mixture close at hand.
I'll have on a table of rich brocade
That I think the pixies must have made
For the dull gold thread on blues and grays
Weaves the pattern of Puck--The Magic Maze.
On the mantlepiece I'll have a place
For a little mud god with a painted face,
That was given to me--oh, long ago,
By a Phillippine maid in Olangapo.
Then--just in range of a lazy reach--
A bluging bowl of Indian beech
With brim and things that are good to munch--
Hickory nuts to crack and crunch,
Big fat raisins and sun-dried dates
And curious fruits from the Malay Straits,
Maple sugar and cookies brown
With good hard cider to wash them down,
Wine-sap apples, pick of the crop,
And ears of corn to shell and pop,
With plenty of butter and lots of salt--
If you don't get filled it's not my fault.
And there where the shadows fall I've planned
To have a magnificent Concert Grand
With polished wood and ivory keys
For wild discordant rhapsodies,
For wailing minor Hindu songs,
For Chinese chants and clanging gongs,
For flippant jazz and for lullabies
ANd moody things that I'll improvise
To play the long gray dusk away
And bid good-bye to another day.
Pictures--I think I'll have but three;
One in oil, of a wind-swept sea
With the flying scud and the waves whipped white--
(I know the chap who can paint it right)
In lapis blue and a deep jade green--
A great big smashing fine marine
That'll make you feel the spray in your face--
I'll hang it over my fireplace.
The second picutre--a freakish thing--
Is gaudy and bright as a bacaw's wing--
An impressionistic smear called "Sin,"
A nude on a striped zebra skin
By a Danish girl I knew in France.
My respectable friends will look askance
At the puorple eyes and the scarlet hair,
At the pallid face and the evil stare
Of a sinister, beautiful vampire face.
I shouldn't have it about the place,
But I like--while I loathe--the beastly thing,
And that's the way one feels about sin.
The picture I love the best of all
Will hang alone on my study wall
Where the sunset's glow and the moon's cold gleam
Will fall on the face and make it seem
That the eyes in the picture are meeting mine,
That the lips are curved in the fine, sweet line
Of that wistful, tender, provicative smile
That has stirred my heart for a wondrous while.
It's the sketch of a girl who loved too well
To tie me down to that bit of Hell
That a drifter knows when he finds he's held
By the soft, strong chains that passions weld.
It was best for her and for me, I know,
That she measured my love and bade me go,
FOr we both have our great illusion yet
Unsoiled, unspoiled by a vain regret.
I won't deny that it makes me sad
To know that I've missed what I might have had.
It's a clean, sweet memory quite apart,
And I've been faithful--in my heart.
All these things I will have about,
Not a one could I do without,
Cedar and sandalwood chips to burn
In the tarnished bowl of a copper urn,
A paperweight of meterotie
That seared and scored the sky one night,
A Moro kris--my paper knife--
Once slit the throat of a Rajah's wife.
THe beams of my house will be fragrant wood
That once in a teeming jungle stood
As a proud, tall tree where the leopards crouched.
THe roof must have a rakish dip
To shadowy eaves where the rain can drip
In a damp, persistent, tuneful way;
It's a cheerful sound on a gloomy day.
And I want a shingle loose somewhere
To wail like a banshee in despair
When the wind is high and the storm gods race,
And I am snug by my fireplace.
I hope a couple of birds will nest
Around the house. I'll do my best
To make them happy so every year
They'll raise their brood of fledglings here.
When I have my house I'll call my "Condiment Shelf"
Filled with all manner of herbs and spice,
Curry and chutney for meats and rice,
Pots and bottles of extracts rare--
Onions and garlice will both be there--
and soyo and saffron and savory-goo
And stuff that I'll buy from an old Hindu.
Ginger and syrup in quaint stone jars,
Almonds and figs in tinseled bars,
Astrakhan caviar, highly prized,
And citron and orange peel crystallized,
Anchovy paste and poha jam,
Basil and chili and marjoram,
Pickles and cheeses from every land,
And flavors that come for Samarkand;
And hung with a string from a handy hook
Will be a dog-eared, well-thumbed book
That is pasted full of recipes
From France and Spain and the Carribees--
Roots and leaves and herbs to use
For curious soups and odd ragouts.
I'll have a cook that I'll name Oh Joy,
A sleek, fat, yello-faced Chinese boy
Who can roast a pig or mix a drink
(You can't improve on a slant-eyed Chink).
On the gra-stone hearth there'll be a mat
For a scrappy, swaggering yellow cat
With a war-scarred face from a hundred fights
With neighbors' cats on moonlight nights;
A wise old Tom who can hold his own
And make my dogs let him alone.
I'll have a window seat broad and deep
Where I can sprawl to read or sleep,
With windows placed so i can turn
And watch the sunsets blaze and burn
Beyond high peaks that scar the sky
Like bare whie wolf fangs that defy
The very gods. I'll have a nook
For a savage idol that I took
From a ruined temple in Peru,
A demon chaser named Mang-Chu,
To guard my house by night and day
And keep all evil things away.
Pewter and bronze and hammered brass,
Old carved wood and gleaming glass,
Candles in polychrome candlesticks,
And peasant lamps in floating wicks,
Dragons in silk on a Mandarin suit,
In a chest that is filled with vagbond loot;
All of the beautiful, useless things
That a vagabond's aimless drifting brings.
Then, when my house is all complete,
I'll stretch me out on a window seat
With a favorite bood and a cigarette,
And a long, cool drink that Oh Joy will get,
And I'll look about my bachelor nest
While the sun goes zooming down the west,
And the hot gold light will fall on my face
That I've failed to see--that I've missed someway--
A place that I'd planned to find someday;
And I'll feel the lure of it drawing me,
Oh damn, I know what the end will be.
I'll go. And my house will fall away,
While the mice by night and the moths by day
Will nibble the covers off all my books,
And the spiders weave in the shadowed nooks,
And my dogs--I'll see that they have a home
WHile I follow the sun, while I drift and roam
To the ends of the earth like a chip of the stream,
Like a straw on the wind, like a vagrant dream;
And the thought will strike with a swift, sharp pain
That I probably never will build again
This house that I'll have in some far day.
Well--it's just a dream house, anyway.
By - Don Blanding
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