_New Year"s Day_, 1909.
Mr. McCarthy is a.s.sociate editor of _The Sacred Heart_, Boston, and a most popular poet and lecturer.
His dear little book, _Voices from Erin_, adorned with the Irish harp and the American shield fastened together by a series of true-love knots, is dedicated "To all who in their love for the new land have not forgotten the old." There is one of these poems which is always called for whenever the author attends any public function where recitations are in order, and I do not wonder at its popularity, for it has the genuine Irish lilt and fascination:
"Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the spring time of the year, When the hawthorn"s whiter than the snow, When the feathered folk a.s.semble and the air is all a-tremble With their singing and their winging to and fro; When queenly Slieve-na-mon puts her verdant vesture on, And smiles to hear the news the breezes bring; When the sun begins to glance on the rivulets that dance; Ah, sweet is Tipperary in the spring!"
I have always wanted to write a poem about my own "Breezy" and the bunch of lilacs at the gate; but not being a poet I have had to keep wanting; but just repeating this gaily tripping tribute over and over, I suddenly seized my pencil and pad, and actually under the inspiration, imitated (at a distance) half of this first verse.
How sweet to be at Breezy in the springtime of the year, With the lilacs all abloom at the gate, And everything so new, so jubilant, so dear, And every little bird is a-looking for his mate.
There, don"t you dare laugh! Perhaps another time I may swing into the exact rhythm.
The Rev. William Rankin Duryea, late Professor at Rutgers College, New Brunswick, was before that appointment a clergyman in Jersey City. His wife told me that he once wrote some verses hoping to win a prize of several hundred dollars offered for the best poem on "Home." He dashed off one at a sitting, read it over, tore it up, and flung it in the waste basket. Then he proceeded to write something far more serious and impressive. This he sent to the committee of judges who were to choose the winner. It was never heard of. But his wife, who liked the rhythm of the despised jingle, took it from the waste basket, pieced it together, copied it, and sent it to the committee. It took the prize. And he showed me in his library, books he had long wanted to own, which he had purchased with this "prize money," writing in each "Bought for a Song."
1
Dark is the night, and fitful and drearily Rushes the wind like the waves of the sea, Little care I as here I sing cheerily, Wife at my side and my baby on knee; King, King, crown me the King!
Home is the Kingdom, and Love is the King.
2
Flashes the firelight upon the dear faces Dearer and dearer as onward we go, Forces the shadow behind us and places Brightness around us with warmth in the glow King, King, crown me the King!
Home is the Kingdom, and Love is the King.
3
Flashes the love-light increasing the glory, Beaming from bright eyes with warmth of the soul, Telling of trust and content the sweet story, Lifting the shadows that over us roll; King, King, crown me the King!
Home is the Kingdom, and Love is the King.
4
Richer than miser with perishing treasure, Served with a service no conquest could bring, Happy with fortune that words cannot measure, Light-hearted I on the hearthstone can sing, King, King, crown me the King!
Home is the Kingdom, and Love is the King.
WM. RANKIN DURYEA, D.D.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SWITCH]
Breezy Meadows, my heart"s delight. I was so fortunate as to purchase it in a ten-minute interview with the homesick owner, who longed to return to Nebraska, and complained that there was not gra.s.s enough on the place to feed a donkey. I am sure this was not a personal allusion, as I saw the donkey and he did look forlorn.
I was captivated by the big elms, all worthy of Dr. Holmes"s wedding-ring, and looked no further, never dreaming of the great surprises in store for me. As, a natural pond of water lilies, some tinted with pink. These lilies bloom earlier and later than any others about here.
An unusual variety of trees, hundreds of white birches greatly adding to the beauty of the place, growing in picturesque clumps of family groups and their white bark, especially white.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOW VINES GROW AT BREEZY MEADOWS]
Two granite quarries, the black and white, and an exquisite pink, and we drive daily over long stretches of solid rock, going down two or three hundred feet--But I shall never explore these for illusive wealth.
A large chestnut grove through which my foreman has made four excellent roads. Two fascinating brooks, with forget-me-nots, blue-eyed and smiling in the water, and the brilliant cardinal-flower on the banks in the late autumn.
From a profusion of wild flowers I especially remark the moccasin-flower or stemless lady"s-slipper.
My _Nature"s Garden_ says--"Because most people cannot forbear picking this exquisite flower that seems too beautiful to be found outside a millionaire"s hothouse, it is becoming rarer every year, until the picking of one in the deep forest where it must now hide, has become the event of a day"s walk." Nearly 300 of this orchid were found in our wooded garden this season.
In the early spring, several deer are seen crossing the field just a little distance from the house. They like to drink at the brooks and nip off the buds of the lilac trees. Foxes, alas, abound.
Pheasants, quail, partridges are quite tame, perhaps because we feed them in winter.
I found untold bushes of the blueberry and huckleberry, also enough cranberries in the swamp to supply our own table and sell some. Wild grape-vines festoon trees by the brooks.
Barberries, a dozen bushes of these which are very decorative, and their fruit if skilfully mixed with raisins make a foreign-tasting and delicious conserve.
We have the otter and mink, and wild ducks winter in our brooks. Large birds like the heron and rail appear but rarely; ugly looking and fierce.
The hateful English sparrow has been so reduced in numbers by sparrow traps that now they keep away and the bluebirds take their own boxes again. The place is a safe and happy haven for hosts of birds.
I have a circle of houses for the martins and swallows and wires connecting them, where a deal of gossip goes on.
The pigeons coo-oo-o on the barn roof and are occasionally utilized in a pie, good too!
[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAND ELM (OVER TWO HUNDRED YEARS OLD)]
"I wonder how my great trees are coming on this summer."
"Where are your trees, Sir?" said the divinity student.
"Oh, all around about New England. I call all trees mine that I have put my wedding ring on, and I have as many tree-wives as Brigham Young has human ones." "One set"s as green as the other," exclaimed a boarder, who has never been identified.
"They"re all Bloomers,"--said the young fellow called John. (I should have rebuked this trifling with language, if our landlady"s daughter had not asked me just then what I meant by putting my wedding-ring on a tree.) "Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, my dear, said I.--I have worn a tape almost out on the rough barks of our old New England elms and other big trees. Don"t you want to hear me talk trees a little now?
That is one of my specialties."
"What makes a first-cla.s.s elm?"
"Why, size, in the first place, and chiefly anything over twenty feet clear girth five feet above the ground and with a spread of branches a hundred feet across may claim that t.i.tle, according to my scale. All of them, with the questionable exception of the Springfield tree above referred to, stop, so far as my experience goes, at about twenty-two or twenty-three feet of girth and a hundred and twenty of spread."
Three of my big elms easily stand the test Dr. Holmes prescribed, and seem to spread themselves since being a.s.sured that they are worthy of one of his wedding-rings if he were alive, and soon there will be other applicants in younger elms.
I am pleased that my memory has brought before me so unerringly the pleasant pictures of the past. But my agreeable task is completed.
The humming-birds have come on this fifteenth of July to sip at early morn the nectar from the blossoms of the trumpet-vine, now beginning its brilliant display. That is always a signal for me to drop all indoor engagements and from this time, the high noon of midsummer fascinations, to keep out of doors enjoying to the full the ever-changing glories of Nature, until the annual Miracle Play of the Transfiguration of the Trees.
THE END