Wayside Weeds

The hunter leaves his tender spouse
For a rude bed of hemlock boughs,
Content to bag a head or two
Of bearded moose or caribou.
But give me rather, if you please,
A score-card full of 4’s and 3’s.
The bunker cleared, the putt gone done,
And, of all joys the flower and crown,
The well-hit tee-shot’s graceful flight
When everything has gone just right!
Alas! Fate holds for me in store
No chances of a bogey score.
I must send in till I am sick
Cards that defy arithmetic;
Nay, Haply, the Etobicoke
May add to every hole a stroke,
Yet, Colonel, if your grace awards
Some place among the minor bards,
Who sing the Game to me – Ah, then,
I am the happiest of men!
If me from this no fate debars
Then my swelled head shall strike the stars.

When You and I were Young[9 - Read at the Dinner given at the York Club, Toronto, November 29th, 1912, in honour of Dr. Adam H. Wright.]

When you and I were babes, Adam,
In good Prince Albert’s time,
The word went forth that war should cease,
Commerce should link all lands, and Peace
Should dwell in every clime.

When you and I were boys, Adam,
In Queen Victoria’s days,
Those guns that now so silent stand,
Where meet the rulers of our land,
With olive decked and bays.

Roared from the Russian ramparts grim,
Their muzzles all ablaze,
While old Todleben, with his back
Against the wall, foiled each attack
In Queen Victoria’s days.

When you and I were young, Adam,
In good Victoria’s time,
We stood together side by side,
When Mewburn and Mackenzie died,
And Tempest, “ere their prime.”

But say not “they have left no peer – ”
That were unwelcome praise
To those three friends of ours long dead,
Whose blood for Fatherland was shed
In good Victoria’s days.

In royal Edward’s time, Adam,
Fresh prophecies were rife.
They told us nickel-pointed shot
And flat trajectories and what not
Would rid the world of strife.

But now that we are old, Adam,
We see with startled eyes
Quick-firing guns won’t stop the Jap,
Nor Serb nor Bulgar cares a rap
Who wins the Nobel prize.

When you and I were young, Adam,
There were no telephones;
There was no ultramicroscope;
And no X-rays for those who grope
And pry among the bones.

But, though with diagnostic aids
They were but ill supplied,
There were a few who shrewdly guessed
(Old What’s-his-name among the rest)
At what went on inside.

When you and I were young, Adam,
It was damnation stark
To doubt that all that breathe the air,
Came, male and female, pair by pair,
Straight out of Noah’s ark.

“Mutantur,” Adam, “tempora
Mutamur atque nos,”
And now we’re not a bit afraid
To tell just how the world was made
In detail and in gross.

In pre-Archæan periods
Of elemental stress
The C and H and O and N
Collide, rebound, combine, and then
React with H2S.

Colloidal specks from this ensued
Which grew, and grew, and grew,
With lively motion all endued,