THE WAYFARER

The wayfarer,

Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,

"I see that no one has passed here
In a long time."

Later he saw that each weed

Was a singular knife.

"Well," he mumbled at last,

"Doubtless there are other roads."

THE BLADES OF GRASS

In Heaven,

Some little blades of grass

Stood before God.

"What did you do?"

Then all save one of the little blades

Began eagerly to relate

The merits of their lives.

This one stayed a small way behind,

Ashamed.

Presently, God said,

"And what did you do?"

The little blade answered, "Oh, my Lord,

Memory is bitter to me,

For, if I did good deeds,

I know not of them."

Then God, in all his splendor,

Arose from his throne.

"Oh, best little blade of grass!" he said.

Thomas Augustine Daly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 28, 1871. He attended Villanova College and Fordham University (1889), leaving there at the end of his sophomore year to become a newspaper man.

Canzoni (1906) and Carmina (1909) contain the best-known of Daly's varied dialect verses. Although he has written in half a dozen different idioms including "straight" English (vide Songs of Wedlock, 1916), his half-humorous, halfpathetic interpretations of the Irish and Italian immigrants are his forte.

THE SONG OF THE THRUSH

Ah! the May was grand this mornin'!
Shure, how could I feel forlorn in
Such a land, when tree and flower tossed
their kisses to the breeze?

Could an Irish heart be quiet

While the Spring was runnin' riot,

An' the birds of free America were singin' in the trees? In the songs that they were singin'

No familiar note was ringin',

But I strove to imitate them an' I whistled like a lad. Oh, my heart was warm to love them

For the very newness of them—

For the ould songs that they helped me to forget-an' I was glad.

So I mocked the feathered choir

To my hungry heart's desire,

An' I gloried in the comradeship that made

their joy my own.

Till a new note sounded, stillin'

All the rest. A thrush was trillin'!

Ah! the thrush I left behind me in the fields about

Athlone!

Where, upon the whitethorn swayin',

He was minstrel of the Mayin',

In my days of love an' laughter that the years have laid at rest;

Here again his notes were ringin'!

But I'd lost the heart for singin'

Ah! the song I could not answer was the one I knew the best.

MIA CARLOTTA

Giuseppe, da barber, ees greata for "mash,"
He gotta da bigga, da blacka mustache,
Good clo'es an' good styla an' playnta good cash.

W'enevra Giuseppe ees walk on da street,
Da peopla dey talka, "how nobby! how neat!
How softa da handa, how smalla da feet.”

He raisa hees hat an' he shaka hees curls,
An' smila weeth teetha so shiny like pearls;
O! many da heart of da seelly young girls
He gotta-

Yes, playnta he gotta

But notta
Carlotta!

Giuseppe, da barber, he maka da eye,
An' lika da steam engine puffa an' sigh,
For catcha Carlotta w'en she ees go by.

Carlotta she walka weeth nose in da air,
An' look through Giuseppe weeth far-away stare,
As eef she no see dere ees som'body dere.

Giuseppe, da barber, he gotta da cash,
He gotta da clo'es an' da bigga mustache,
He gotta da seelly young girls for da "mash,"
But notta-

You bat my life, notta

Carlotta.
I gotta!

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in 1872 at Dayton, Ohio, the son of negro slaves. He was, before and after he began to write his interpretative verse, an elevator-boy. He tried newspaper work unsuccessfully and, in 1899, was given a minor position in the Library of Congress at Washington, D. C. Dunbar's first collection, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), contains many of his most characteristic poems. In an introduction, in which mention was made of the octoroon Dumas and the great Russian poet Pushkin, who was a mulatto, William Dean Howells wrote, "So far as I can remember, Paul Dunbar was the only man of pure African blood and of American civilization to feel the negro life æsthetically and express it lyrically. . . . His brilliant and unique achievement was to have studied the American negro objectively, and to have represented him as he found him." Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899) and Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903) are two other volumes full of folkstuff.

Dunbar died in the city of his birth, Dayton, Ohio, February 10, 1906.

THE TURNING OF THE BABIES IN THE BED1

Woman's sho' a cur'ous critter, an' dey ain't no doubtin' dat.

She's a mess o' funny capahs f'om huh slippahs to huh. hat.

Ef yo' tries to un'erstan' huh, an' yo' fails, des' up an'

say:

"D' ain't a bit o' use to try to un'erstan' a woman's way."

I don' mean to be complainin', but I's jes' a-settin' down
Some o' my own obserwations, w'en I cas' my eye eroun'.
Ef yo' ax me fu' to prove it, I ken do it mighty fine,
Fu' dey ain't no bettah 'zample den dis ve'y wife o' mine.

In de ve'y hea't o' midnight, w'en I's sleepin' good an' soun',

I kin hyeah a so't o' rustlin' an' somebody movin' 'roun'. An' I say, "Lize, whut yo' doin'?" But she frown an' shek huh haid,

"Hesh yo' mouf, I's only tu'nin' of de chillun in de bed.

"Don' yo' know a chile gits restless, layin' all de night one way?

An' yo' got to kind o' 'range him sev'al times befo' de day?

So de little necks won't worry, an' de little backs won't

break;

Don' yo' t'ink 'cause chillun's chillun dey haint got no pain an' ache."

From Lyrics of Love and Laughter. Copyright, 1903, by Dodd, Mead & Company.