Wayside Weeds

The mischief with a ball.

Wisdom and Fancy

From the German of A. G. Marius

With weary steps as Wisdom trod
In Reason’s dusty way
Came Fancy with alluring nod
And beckoned him astray.
Laughing she snatched away his books,
And charmed him with her witching looks,
He could not say her nay.

She shook her curls with childlike grace
And all his anger fled,
He looked into her sunny face
And followed where she led.

And lo! his weariness was gone
Fresh vigour filled his soul
She led him up, she led him on
Till he had reached his goal.

Persicos odi

TO MY TOBACCONIST

I hate your imported Havannahs,
Your perfumed cheroots I decline;
His own special weakness each man has,
A pipe, I confess it, is mine.

Why take from their elegant wrappers
Your gilded cork-tipped cigarettes,
Fit only for militant flappers
Or reckless R.M.C. cadets?

What need for cigars to be pining
When smoking a briar or a clay;
In front of the fire I’m reclining,
And peacefully puffing away.

The Iceberg

We stood upon the deck and saw
Mid fog and mist the iceberg loom;
And while we gazed in wondering awe,
It vanished into mist and gloom.

With various skill each tried to draw
What printed on his brain had been
The vision that he thought he saw
Or that he thought he should have seen.

Some drew it flat, some drew it round
And some with many a tower and steeple
And when we shewed our work we found
As many bergs as there were people!

Across each other’s paths we drift
Pale shadows on a misty sea.
The clouds but for a moment lift
Then naught is left but memory.

If then at any distant day
Your thoughts should chance to turn to me
Draw me not as I am, I pray,
But as you think I ought to be.

Horace, Odes I. i.[8 - Read at the Farewell Dinner at the Old Toronto Golf Club House, October 19th, 1912, Col. G. A. Sweny, the President of the Club, in the Chair.]

Colonel, Most worthy President,
Our Club’s chief stay and ornament,
One man who drives with dust and jar
A 40 h.p. motor car,
All other mortals counts but clods,
Himself a rival of the Gods.
The fickle crowd another woos
Him for a threefold term to choose.
A third will lie awake all night
If Manitoba wheat be light.
Not Rockefeller’s treasure chest
Could tempt the Farmer to invest
The savings of his life of toil
In shares of rubber or of oil.
The liner’s skipper when he steers,
The foghorn booming in his ears,
Through thousand dangers all unseen,
Sighs for the peaceful village green;
Yet fog nor ice nor foundered ships
Can stop him making record trips.
Some spurn not, when their throats are dry,
Long drinks of Irish or Old Rye,
Nor scorn to blow through moistened lips
Great clouds of smoke between the sips;
Others in such things find no charms,
And when the bugle calls to arms
Would banish from the tented green
(Bugbear of matrons) the Canteen.