Just Words

As I am going through more "stuff", I ran across a book titled "Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics". On the inside cover it is stamped "Big Horn Academy Library" and was published in 1915. It is an amazing collection of poems, etc., especially knowing what things were considered appropriate to discuss in her home during Mother's growing up years. When whistling was considered inappropriate, this little book certainly seems to indicate that literature was quite another matter. As I glanced through the different poems I wondered which ones caught Mother's eye as she did her homework. I also wondered if Grandma knew what Mother was reading - so many of the poems are of love lost, passion, and all kinds of emotions that were perhaps ok to read about, as long as they were written by people like Shakespear, Wordsworth, Burns, Lindsay (who?), Moore, Shelley, Keats, to name just a few of the better known authors, whose works are included. One of the poems is titled "A Ditty". How many times did we hear that word?
I wanted to share just one of them with you, and you can wonder, with me, if this is one that Mother read with a twinkle in her eye. For any man who may read this, I mean no disrespect, but because you knew Mother and Dad you probably will appreciate this a little more.

ADVICE TO A GIRL

Never love unless you can
Bear with all the faults of man!
Men sometimes will jealous be
Though but little cause they see,
And hang the head as discontent,
And speak what straight they will repent.

Men, that but one Saint adore,
Make a show of love to more;
Beauty must be scorn'd in none,
Though but truly served in one:
For what is courtship but disguise?
True hearts may have dissembling eyes.

Men, when their affairs require,
Must awhile themselves retire;
Sometimes hunt, and sometimes hawk,
And not ever sit and talk:-
If these and such-like you can bear,
Then like, and love, and never fear!
(By T. Campion)