A Little Book of Western Verse

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Title: A Little Book of Western Verse
Author: Eugene Field
Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9606]
[This file was first
posted on October 9, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A LITTLE
BOOK OF WESTERN VERSE ***
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A LITTLE BOOK OF WESTERN VERSE
by Eugene Field
1889
TO MARY FIELD FRENCH
A dying mother gave to you
Her child a many years ago;
How in
your gracious love he grew,
You know, dear, patient heart, you know.
The mother's child you fostered then
Salutes you now and bids you
take
These little children of his pen
And love them for the author's
sake.
To you I dedicate this book,
And, as you read it line by line,
Upon
its faults as kindly look
As you have always looked on mine.
Tardy the offering is and weak;--
Yet were I happy if I knew
These
children had the power to speak
My love and gratitude to you.
E. F.
Go, little book, and if an one would speak
thee ill, let him bethink
him that thou art
the child of one who loves thee well.
EUGENE FIELD
A MEMORY
When those we love have passed away; when from our lives something

has gone out; when with each successive day we miss the presence that
has become a part of ourselves, and struggle against the realization that
it is with us no more, we begin to live in the past and thank God for the
gracious boon of memory. Few of us there are who, having advanced to
middle life, have not come to look back on the travelled road of human
existence in thought of those who journeyed awhile with us, a part of
all our hopes and joyousness, the sharers of all our ambitions and our
pleasures, whose mission has been fulfilled and who have left us with
the mile-stones of years still seeming to stretch out on the path ahead. It
is then that memory comes with its soothing influence, telling us of the
happiness that was ours and comforting us with the ever recurring
thought of the pleasures of that travelled road. For it is happiness to
walk and talk with a brother for forty years, and it is happiness to know
that the surety of that brother's affection, the knowledge of the
greatness of his heart and the nobility of his mind, are not for one
memory alone but may be publicly attested for admiration and
emulation. That it has fallen to me to speak to the world of my brother
as I knew him I rejoice. I do not fear that, speaking as a brother, I shall
crowd the laurel wreaths upon him, for to this extent he lies in peace
already honored; but if I can show him to the world, not as a poet but as
a man,--if I may lead men to see more of that goodness, sweetness, and
gentleness that were in him, I shall the more bless the memory that has
survived.
My brother was born in St. Louis in 1850. Whether the exact day was
September 2 or September 3 was a question over which he was given to
speculation, more particularly in later years, when he was accustomed
to discuss it frequently and with much earnest ness. In his youth the
anniversary was generally held to be September 2, perhaps the result of
a half-humorous remark by my father that Oliver Cromwell had died
September 3, and he could not reconcile this date to the thought that it
was an important anniversary to one of his children. Many years after,
when my uncle, Charles Kellogg Field, of Vermont, published the
genealogy of the Field family, the original date, September 3, was
restored, and from that time my