Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.
A Forgotten BardClinton Scollard
I
Where Pine and noisy Nassau meet,
This little book of song I found
In scarred morocco quaintly bound.
Each musty and bemildewed leaf
Bespeaks long years of grime and grief;
Long years,—for on the title page
A dim date tells the volume’s age.
In that dead century’s stately tongue
In those envanished days of yore?—
An empty name—I know no more!
Yet as I read will fancy form
A face whose glow is fresh and warm,
A frank, clear eye wherein I view
A nature open, genial, true.
Has barred to him that temple’s gate;
He loved,—was loved,—for one divines
An answered passion in his lines;
He died, ah, yes, he died, but when
He ceased to walk the ways of men,
Or where his clay with mother clay
Commingles sweetly, who can say!
A not too lonely study nook,
Where kindly gleams of light may play
Across it of a wintry day;
And I will take it down sometimes
To con the prim and polished rhymes.—
Will thus, when the grey years have fled,
Some book of mine be housed and read?