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AS FALL THE LEAVES
As fall the leaves, so drop the days
In silence from the tree of life ;
Born for a little while to blaze
In action in the heat of strife,
And then to shrivel with Time’s blast
And fade forever in the past.
In beauty once the leaf was seen;
To all it offered gentle shade ;
Men knew the splendor of its green
That cheered them so, would quickly fade:
And quickly, too, must pass away
All that is splendid of to-day.
To try to keep the leaves were vain :
Men understand that they must fall;
Why should they bitterly complain
When sorrows come to one and all?
Why should they mourn the passing day
That must depart along the way?
THE BOY THAT WAS
When the hair about the temples starts to show
the signs of gray,
And a fellow realizes that he’s wandering far
away
From the pleasures of his boyhood and his
youth, and never more
Will know the joy of laughter as he did in days
of yore,
Oh, it’s then he starts to thinking of a stubby
little lad
With a face as brown as berries and a soul
supremely glad.
When a gray-haired dreamer wanders down the
lanes of memory
And forgets the living present for the time of
” used-to-be,”
He takes off his shoes and stockings, and he
throws his coat away,
And he’s free from all restrictions, save the rules
of manly play.
He may be in richest garments, but bareheaded
in the sun
He forgets his proud successes and the riches
he has won.
Oh, there’s not a man alive but that would give
his all to be
The stubby little fellow that in dreamland he
can see,
And the splendors that surround him and the
joys about him spread
Only seem to rise to taunt him with the boyhood
that has fled.
When the hair about the temples starts to show
Time’s silver stain,
Then the richest man that’s living yearns to be
a boy again.
THE JUNK BOX
My father often used to say :
” My boy don’t throw a thing away :
You’ll find a use for it some day.”
So in a box he stored up things,
Bent nails, old washers, pipes and rings,
And bolts and nuts and rusty springs.
Despite each blemish and each flaw,
Some use for everything he saw;
With things material, this was law.
And often when he’d work to do,
He searched the junk box through and through
And found old stuff as good as new.
And I have often thought since then,
That father did the same with men;
He knew he’d need their help again.
It seems to me he understood
That men, as well as iron and wood,
May broken be and still be good.
Despite the vices he’d display
He never threw a man away,
But kept him for another day.
A human junk box is this earth
And into it we’re tossed at birth,
To wait the day we’ll be of worth.
Though bent and twisted, weak of will,
And full of flaws and lacking skill,
Some service each can render still.