Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber's Note:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible. Some changes of spelling and punctuation at the end of the
text.

The Calendar
and
Other Verses
by
Irving Sidney Dix

To Robert Meaker

Dear boy, ten summers--ten swift summers now
Have come and gone since last I said good-bye,
Ten idle, wasted summers gone, and how
I hardly know, so swift the seasons fly:
So swift the seasons come, so swift they go,
That scare it seems one brief, one little day,
Since boyish voices bid us come and play:
And little girls did seem to lure us so.

O Robert!--Robert!--If in Paradise
These idle words of mine can penetrate,
Thou knowest, then, that tears have wet mine eyes,
Thou knowest that I felt thy ruthless fate;
And yet, dear boy, I sometimes feel that thou
Art happier there than I who mourn thee now.

I. S. D.

Written in 1912.

Contents

Page

The Calendar 7
Niagara 14
Fairies of the Frost 15
The Rivermen 16
The School of Life 17
A Visit from a Cricket 20
In Praise of Inez 22
The Crime of Christmastime 23
The Miner 25
Love of Country 27
The Sinking of the Titanic 27
War and Peace 30
Peace and War 31
To Andrew Carnegie 32

Foreword

About a year ago, having collected all those poems and verses which I considered of any value, I took a certain pride in the thought that I might soon bring under one roof these imaginary children of mine, so that they might be sheltered in time of storm, as it were, from the cold, and oftimes unfeeling world of commerce but where friends of poetry, who had met with some of my stray children of verse in public journals, might meet with them again, if they desired, with other friendly faces around one common fireside.

But I found that the expense incident to such a venture was so great that unless a large number of copies were sold I would be involved in a larger debt than I cared to contract. Then the plan of securing sufficient advance subscriptions to meet part of the expense of a first edition occurred to me, thereby following the method of Tennyson, Robert Burns and others, of whose example I needed not to be ashamed, but other work prevented me, and still prevents me, from carrying out this plan.

So lest those friends who have shown an interest in my verses should think that I have turned aside from the Path of Poetry, I herewith offer "The Calendar and Other Verses," as evidence of my love for and interest in the greatest of all the arts, hoping that the time may come when I shall be able to present a more worthy offering to the Muses and perhaps justify the kind words that have recently appeared in regards to the author of "The Quiet Life"--A Plain Poem of the Hills, which, in a revised form, appeared serially during the past summer in The Wayne Countean.

I. S. D.

Shehawken, Pa.

Copyrighted 1913
by
IRVING SIDNEY DIX

The Calendar

AN IDYLL OF THE HILLS