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These booklets are not published as a financial venture—they are likely to be a failure in this direction, for the cost of printing alone equals the selling price, on account of the small number issued, only 250 copies, and fifty copies are not for sale. Five hundred copies of the Silent Life were printed in 1907, and I have left only 160 copies for sale. I desire to dispose of these and the small edition of "The Comet" during the present year, so that another booklet (containing, I hope still better material) may be issued during the year of 1911.

To those who may wish to send copies of either of these booklets to their friends, thereby assisting in the disposal of this edition, the following offer will be of interest.

Ten copies, assorted to suit—$1.00.

Address:

Irving Dix,
            Shehawken,
                        Wayne Co.,
                                    Penna.

Foreword

A few years ago, while recovering from an illness, I conceived the idea of writing some reminiscent lines on country life in the Wayne Highlands. And during the interval of a few days I produced some five hundred couplets,—a few good, some bad and many indifferent—and such speed would of necessity invite the indifferent. A portion of these lines were published in 1907. However, I had hoped to revise and republish them, with additions of the same type, at a later date as a souvenir volume of verses for those who spend the summer months among these hills—as well as for the home-fast inhabitants. But in substituting the following collection of verses I hope my judgment will be confirmed by those who chance to read these simple stanzas of one, who—

"Loves not man the less, but Nature more
From those our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal."

I. S. D.            

Copyright 1910
by
Irving Dix

Verses in this booklet may be copied in the public prints by giving credit as above.

The Comet

wift circuit-rider of the endless skies,
Thou wanderer of the outer, unknown air,
Amid those dim, uncharted regions there,
Imagination droops—in deep surprise
Man doth behold thee, and the fearful speed
At which thou spurrest on thy flaming steed.

Born of the dark and ever-deepening Past,
Who nurs'd thee there in yonder viewless space
Afar from earth—thy all-beholding face
Hath gazed unspeakable, with clear eye cast
Worldward on each magnificent return
As if of human progress thou wouldst learn.

And thou hast seen each triumph and each plan
By which the human race since human time
Hath learned at last Earth's secrets all-sublime
While rising from the elements to man—
Hast seen it triumph over sea and air
And universal knowledge hope to share.

Thy circuit measures well the age of man,
The epoch of a life—and few there be
Who seeing thee, thy face again may see,
For human life is but a little span,
With varying cycles of a different day,
And in diffusion wears itself away.

Child of the Sun, when first the human eye
Beheld thee coursing in the night afar
Like an illumined spectre of a star—
Beheld thy awful form against the sky
Strong men fell earthward with a coward-cry
On their pale lips, as if afraid to die—

And that brute King—Nero, the cruel King,
When looking on thy fiery face unknown,
Sate trembling on his little human throne,
And thought that thou didst evil tidings bring—
That thou wert writing on the distant skies
A doom from which no human king could rise.

Thy age is all unknown—man can but guess
The time when first the Sun thy circle set—
He can but guess thy secret