The Days of a Man 1872 



Grove life is pleasant, and methinks 

 These lines may serve as swift-forged links 

 Unpolished but with 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," on his way 



birthday to a birthday party staged at Free Hollow, some 



o* r 3 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 703 



