The Days of a Man 1872 



Grove life is pleasant, and methinks 

 These lines may serve as swift-forged links 

 Unpolished but w 7 ith greater power 

 To hold, each set, its pleasant hour 

 Safe from Oblivion's wasting touch 

 And selfish Care's corroding clutch. 



Of my verse Anderson used to say that I often 



started in to make a beautiful picture and then 



threw mud at it, that being his interpretation of 



my sense of humor. It is true that most of the lines 



I then wrote were farcical. I made, however, some 



serious metrical translations, especially of lyrics by 



Goethe. In the last term of my senior year I was 



chosen class poet and acted in that capacity on 



Class Day in Commencement Week. On that 



occasion I read "An Arthurian Legend," a humorous 



epic detailing the adventures of one Arthur B., a 



A classmate, "late of Bedford, England,' 5 on his way 



birthday to a birthday party staged at Free Hollow, some 



^ r miles out in the country, on a furiously rainy night, 



April i the first of April. 



The class song previously chosen was for some 

 reason rejected on the morning of the very day. 

 The committee then ordered a new one to the tune 

 of "Araby's Daughter," shutting up Copeland and 

 me in separate rooms, each with instructions to 

 produce a set of suitable lines. Mine happened to 

 meet with favor, the burden being: 



We love thee and honor thee ever, Cornell. 



Upon leaving college, for the next fifteen years I wrote 

 no more verse, a few whimsical effusions excepted. 

 But shortly after my second marriage in 1887 I was 

 impelled to work out some serious thoughts in poetic 



C 70 3 



