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January

TO TIME, THE OLD TRAVELER

They slander thee, Old Traveler,
Who say that thy delight

Is to scatter ruin, far and wide,
In thy wantonness of might:
For not a leaf that falleth
Before thy restless wings,

But in thy flight, thou changest it
To a thousand brighter things.

"T is true thy progress layeth
Full many a loved one low,

And for the brave and beautiful

Thou hast caused our tears to flow;
But always near the couch of death

Nor thou, nor we can stay;
And the breath of thy departing wings
Dries all our tears away!

WILLIAM HENRY TIMROD

January First

Some thunder on the heights of song, their race Godlike in power, while others at their feet Are breathing measures scarce less strong and sweet

Than those that peal from out that loftiest place;

Meantime, just midway on the mount, his face
Fairer than April heavens, when storms retreat,
And on their edges rain and sunshine meet,
Pipes the soft lyrist lays of tender grace,
But where the slopes of bright Parnassus sweep
Near to the common ground, a various throng
Chant lowlier measures-yet each tuneful strain
(The silvery minor of earth's perfect song)
Blends with that music of the topmost steep,
O'er whose vast realm the master minstrels
reign!
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

O'er those who lost and those who won,
Death holds no parley which was right—
JEHOVAH judges Arlington.

JAMES RYDER RANDALL

Paul Hamilton Hayne born, 1830

James Ryder Randall, Laureate of the War between the States, born, 1839

January Second

In a word,

Mars and Minerva both in him concurred
For arts, for arms, whose pen and sword alike,
As Cato's did, may admiration strike

Into his foes; while they confess withal

It was their guilt styled him a criminal. . . . From Epitaph by “His Man"

In this epitaph we have what is in all probability the single poem in any true sense-the single product of sustained poetic art—that was written in America for a hundred and fifty years after the settlement of Jamestown.

WILLIAM P. TRENT

Nathaniel Bacon, "The First American Rebel," born,

1647

January Tbird

The only calendar

That marks my seasons,
Is that sweet face of hers,
Her moods and reasons,
Wherein no record is

Of winter seasons.

Alfred Mordecai born, 1804

MADISON CAWEIN

January Fourth

The strange and curious race madness of the American Republic will be a study for centuries to come. That madness took a child-race out of a warm cradle, threw it into the ocean of politics-the stormiest and most treacherous we have known—and bade it swim for its own and the life of the nation!

MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY

The Social Equality Bill passed in Louisiana, 1869

January Fifth

What the cloud doeth
The Lord knoweth,

The cloud knoweth not
What the artist doeth,
The Lord knoweth;

Knoweth the artist not?

SIDNEY LANIER

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