That poetry was a means of grace was known to the first man who wrote a verse or who sang a ballad.  It was discovered back in the darkness before men invented words or devised letters.  The only poetry you will ever know is that you learned by heart when you were young.  Happy is he who has learned much, and much of that which is good.  Bad poetry is not poetry at all except to the man who makes it.  For its creator, even the feeblest verse speaks something of inspiration and of aspiration.  It is said that Frederick the Great went into battle with a vial of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verse in the other.  Whatever we think of the one, we feel more kindly toward him for the other.

Charles Eliot Norton advises every man to read a bit of poetry every day for spiritual refreshment.  It would be well for each of us if we should follow this advice.  It is not too late yet and if some few would heed his words and mine, these pages would not be written in vain.

I heard once of a man banished from New England to the Llano Estacado, the great summer-bitten plains of Texas.  While riding alone among his cows over miles of yucca and sage he kept in touch with the world through the poetry he recited to himself.  His favorite, I remember, was Whittier’s “Randolph of Roanoke:” 

“Here where with living ear and eye
He heard Potomac flowing,
And through his tall ancestral trees
Saw Autumn’s sunset glowing;

“Too honest or too proud to feign
A love he never cherished,
Beyond Virginia’s border line
His patriotism perished.

“But none beheld with clearer eye
The plague spot o’er her spreading,
Nor heard more sure the steps of doom
Along her future treading.”

This is good verse and it may well serve to relate the gray world of Northern Texas to the many-colored world in which men struggle and die for things worthwhile, winning their lives eternally through losing them.

Here are some other bits of verse which on the sea and on the lands, in the deserts or in the jungles have served the same purpose for other men, perhaps indeed for you.

“It has been prophesied these many years
I should not die save in Jerusalem,
Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land. 
But bear me to that chamber, there I’ll lie,
In this Jerusalem shall Hardy die.”

—­

“And gentlemen of England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhood cheap while any speaks
Who fought with us upon St. Crispin’s day.”

—­

“Let me come in where you sit weeping, aye: 
Let me who have not any child to die
Weep with you for the little one whose love
I have known nothing of. 
The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed
Their pressure round your neck, the hands you used
To kiss.  Such arms, such hands I never knew. 
May I not weep with you
Fain would I be of service, say something
Between the tears, that would be comforting. 
But ah!  So sadder than yourselves am I
Who have no child to die.”