The Calendar and
Other Verses
by
Irving Sidney Dix

To Robert Meaker

ear boy, ten summers—ten swift summers now
Have come and gone since last I said good-bye,
Ten idle, wasted summers gone, and how
I hardly know, so swift the seasons fly:
So swift the seasons come, so swift they go,
That scare it seems one brief, one little day,
Since boyish voices bid us come and play:
And little girls did seem to lure us so.

O Robert!—Robert!—If in Paradise
These idle words of mine can penetrate,
Thou knowest, then, that tears have wet mine eyes,
Thou knowest that I felt thy ruthless fate;
And yet, dear boy, I sometimes feel that thou
Art happier there than I who mourn thee now.

I. S. D.

Written in 1912.

Contents

Foreword

bout a year ago, having collected all those poems and verses which I considered of any value, I took a certain pride in the thought that I might soon bring under one roof these imaginary children of mine, so that they might be sheltered in time of storm, as it were, from the cold, and oftimes unfeeling world of commerce but where friends of poetry, who had met with some of my stray children of verse in public journals, might meet with them again, if they desired, with other friendly faces around one common fireside.

But I found that the expense incident to such a venture was so great that unless a large number of copies were sold I would be involved in a larger debt than I cared to contract. Then the plan of securing sufficient advance subscriptions to meet part of the expense of a first edition occurred to me, thereby following the method of Tennyson, Robert Burns and others, of whose example I needed not to be ashamed, but other work prevented me, and still prevents me, from carrying out this plan.

So lest those friends who have shown an interest in my verses should think that I have turned aside from the Path of Poetry, I herewith offer "The Calendar and Other Verses," as evidence of my love for and interest in the greatest of all the arts, hoping that the time may come when I shall be able to present a more worthy offering to the Muses and perhaps justify the kind words that have recently appeared in regards to the author of "The Quiet Life"—A Plain Poem of the Hills, which, in a revised form, appeared serially during the past summer in The Wayne Countean.

I. S. D.

Shehawken, Pa.

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Copyrighted 1913
by
IRVING SIDNEY DIX

The Calendar
An Idyll of The Hills

Part 1

JANUARY

ome walk a mile with me—'Tis January;
The knee-deep snow lies heavy on the ground
And hark!—the icy winds—how swift they hurry
Over the fields with melancholy sound;
And save these winds or some forsaken raven,
Winging its way along yon frozen hill,