The Peaks of Valor

These are the peaks of valor; keeping clean your father’s name,
Too brave for petty profit to risk the brand of shame,
Adventuring for the future, yet mindful of the past,
For God, for country and for home, still valorous to the last.

These are the peaks of valor:  a speech that knows no lie,
A standard of what’s right and wrong which no man’s wealth can buy,
All unafraid of failure, to venture forth to fight,
Yet never for the victory’s sake to turn away from right.

Ten thousand times the victor is he who fails to win,
Who could have worn the conqueror’s crown by stooping low in sin;
Ten thousand times the braver is he who turns away
And scorns to crush a weaker man that he may rule the day.

These are the peaks of valor:  standing firm and standing true
To the best your father taught you and the best you’ve learned anew,
Helpful to all who need you, winning what joys you can,
Writing in triumph to the end your record as a man.

When the Minister Calls

My Paw says that it used to be,
Whenever the minister came for tea,
’At they sat up straight in their chairs at night
An’ put all their common things out o’ sight,
An’ nobody cracked a joke or grinned,
But they talked o’ the way that people sinned,
An’ the burnin’ fires that would cook you sure
When you came to die, if you wasn’t pure—­
Such a gloomy affair it used to be
Whenever the minister came for tea.

But now when the minister comes to call
I get him out for a game of ball,
And you’d never know if you’d see him bat,
Without any coat or vest or hat,
That he is a minister, no, siree! 
He looks like a regular man to me. 
An’ he knows just how to go down to the dirt
For the grounders hot without gettin’ hurt—­
An’ when they call us, both him an’ me
Have to git washed up again for tea.

Our minister says if you’ll just play fair
You’ll be fit for heaven or anywhere;
An’ fun’s all right if your hands are clean
An’ you never cheat an’ you don’t get mean. 
He says that he never has understood
Why a feller can’t play an’ still be good. 
An’ my Paw says that he’s just the kind
Of a minister that he likes to find—­
So I’m always tickled as I can be
Whenever our minister comes for tea.

The Age of Ink

Swiftly the changes come.  Each day
Sees some lost beauty blown away
And some new touch of lovely grace
Come into life to take its place. 
The little babe that once we had
One morning woke a roguish lad;
The babe that we had put to bed
Out of our arms and lives had fled.

Frocks vanished from our castle then,
Ne’er to be worn or seen again,
And in his knickerbocker pride
He boasted pockets at each side
And stored them deep with various things—­
Stones, tops and jacks and-colored strings;
Then for a time we claimed the joy
Of calling him our little boy.