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ALBERT CLYMER.

BORN: FAIRFIELD CO., O., DEC. 10, 1827. MR. CLYMER now resides on a farm near Morley, Iowa. He has issued a little volume of poems entitled Echoes of the Woods, consisting of songs, ballads and lyrics which in a charming manner carry the author back to the days of boyhood and young manhood in

ALBERT CLYMER.

his Ohio home. The true spirit of the muse pervades the entire volume. He has had a strong partiality for poetry from his earliest recollection. Mr. Clymer has several volumes of verse ready for publication, and devotes his time mainly to writing and doing light farm work.

POETRY AS COMPARED TO PROSE. True poetry of thought, if it is well expressed, In prose, blank verse, or rhyme, as suits men best.

Dull nature wakes from lethargy and sleep;
To contemplation, laughter, chance to weep.
It-heaven-born - the soul of man inspires
With rapture, and his zeal it fires.

It thrills the soul with beauty's vital charm;
To noble deeds it nerves the palsied arm;
It cultivates the heart; incites to love,
And elevates the thoughts to things above.
Since prose is deemed sufficiently complete,
Devoid of rhythm, of rhyme, and of poetic
feet.-

In rhyming verse, we've measured time,
We've harmony, and rhythm, and rhyme;
The parts arranged in order all complete:-
Some lines have many, others have few feet.
Instructive poems we, besure have seen;
And some we ne'er could tell just what they

mean.

We here will not affirm, nor yet deny,
That such is poetry; though it seems dry;
Perchance the author gave us but the hull;
And kept the kernel:- chance our taste is
dull.

We hope from time to time, as shall appear
most meet,
[repeat.
To give you fruit; who taste it will the taste
Though it holds meat all ready to your hand,
It's taste who'd judge, should skill to taste
command.

This fruit may, then, be cracked, and tasted too, all round, [sound. And cracked again; remaining fresh and

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EVOLUTION.

Wonderfully long, indeed, Haeckel's chain, Which gave the moneron two legs and a

brain,

From the depth of the sea the moneron

came;

Haeckel the scientist gave it a name;As small as a pin's head, a globular cell; After ages to crawl, snail-like, from a shell. An infusory, neither male nor female, Acquires a back-bone, and fins, and a tail. A thing without nerve, or muscle, or wish, Is changed to a polyp, a mollusk, a fish. Hatched by the sun from the spawn of the frog, [wog. Reigns queen in a mud-puddle, Miss PolliA tortoise, a monkey, four legs recollect; A man with two hands and a mind walks erect.

Some millions of years requiring to span The chasm between the monkey and man. The billions betwixt his first and last state And the number of times he did transmi

grate

No man from such data can calculate.

The existance of man, how brought about, They ne'er can explain if God is left out. So scientists fail, with all their great skill, To solve the great problem; aye fail thus they will.

God says he made man;-of the ground 'tis confessed

As good, when first formed, as is Haeckel's best.

Those naturalists sure have been to great pains,

To prove that they sprang from a race minus brains.

Such teachers as they should exit the hive; By nature's great law ..the fittest survive." Since they from the spawn of the rena were hatched,

And by them the bull-frogs as croakers are matched,

..From the form of the arm, and the length of the thigh,"

They sprang from the species the gentry would fry.

They judge of the class, order and strain,
By range of vision and compass of brain.
From grinders, and molars, and curve of
the jaw,

And spinal column, they inference draw.
The texture of muscle, the form of the bone,
The order of teeth, and the organs of tone;
The size of the skull, the brain caliber,
The pedigree and habits infer.
Whence a class sprang, thro' which line they
descend,

When they went crawling, or stood upon end. The reptile, the grub, the molecule source; They draw their conclusions from data of

course;

If valves or bivalves; we're told that those seers

Calculate back for a billion of years;

To prove evolution must have produced

man,

Without a creative intelligent plan. Infidels madly the bible have spurned: "Tis only the present in which they're concerned:

Trusting their reason they're going astray, As others will do who take the same way. 'Tis clear, quite clear, very clear to my mind, Those men, as the frogs, to leap are inclined; Equally good at the game of leap-frog, They jump at conclusions and croak in a bog.

WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH.
We've had enough!

Of poison drugs and watering;
Of feeing men for slaughtering;
Of interested flattering;
Of learned legal smattering;
Politic jugglers cattering:-
The public sore while mattering,
The owls of Bacchus chattering,
The liquor drivel pattering,
The sacred shrine bespattering,
The badge of Justice tattering,
The social fabric battering,
The legal cog-wheels clattering;
Till Liberty is tottering: -
Of shilly shally pottering,
We've had enough!

The above jingle may be read from top to bottom, and vice versa.

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JOHN JACOB DICKSON.

BORN: SCOTT Co., IND., SEPT. 8, 1826. WORKING on the farm when young at six dollars per month, Mr. Dickson afterward learned the cooper trade. In 1850 he removed to West Grove, Iowa, where he now resides, buying his farm from the government. In 1864

Where Freedom feels no license or restraint,
Who fears a wrong more than the public ban,
Yet feels unworthy to be called a saint,
Though on the highest mount, serene, above
complaint.

But I am under law e'er since my birth
So that I cannot soar on angel wings
From care and the discordant sounds of Earth
Far up away from there to fairer things
That Faith has pictured, where the dweller
sings;

For love has no opposing foe above

To mar its Eden joy from which there springs A peace that Earth's contending sects approve, Then take the sword and disobey the Lord of love.

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In memory I recall my hopeful days (There was a buoyant spirit once within, And brood o'er youth's contented, cheerful ways,

So full of joy and innocent of sin;

For then the world, with its eternal din

Of creeds, oppression, strife for help,and war,
Had not made me lose faith in all but Him-
Had not impelled a course my peace to mar;
And now I sigh for days in memory afar.
And yet there is a recompense for Age.
The purpose of a wise Creator's plan
Is found recorded in the Sacred Page,
And happiness is for the aged man

Who yields a willing soul, whose mind can

scan

TO A BUDDING POETICAL GENIUS.
The flowers that crowns a rosary
Was once a bud unseen,
Your genius may, developed, be
The world's admiring theme.

In prosy lines devoid of art,
(If you will read my story,
I'll try to act the critic's part,

And help you on to glory.

If you have genius, rare and great,

No rule can be your bar,

Shakespeare made his own law of verse,

And Bonaparte of war.

None but the great dare step aside

From Custom's iron rule.

The common mind must follow her,

Or be esteemed a fool.

No genius now upon the stage,

Whose great inventions show To all the smallness of the age, In things it does not know. As Webster said, there's room above," Where lawyers great may go, And so it is in ev'ry thing;

There is a crowd below.

It is our wish you may succeed,
And laurels crown your brow,
And when you do you will not need
The lines we send you now.

Your feet" the measure" fit exact,

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LOCAL AND NATIONAL POETS OF AMERICA.

Write from your heart - you'll not cater

To kings or reigning wrongs-
Like Milton, Burns, or Whittier,
Breathe freedom in your songs.
The poet's sympathies are not
To party lines confined;
Nature does not dispense the gift
Upon a narrow mind.

When woeing for the muses' grace-
The favor of the nine,

Know this one line of sense is worth,
A thousand of mere rhyme.

THREE HUNDRED HEROES.
The sunset's glow shines o'er the trees,
The pine leaves rustle to the breeze,
The feathered warblers prattle;
But man is vile, the evening star
Looks on a crimson scene of war-
The carnage of a battle.

On come the legions of the Gray-
(The Union must be shot away"
All Howard's corps is broken.
The Babel noise proclaims the tale,
Which through the pines the evening

gale

The fearful news has spoken.

O, for ten minutes more of time

To get the cannon into line,

And stop by rapid shelling,

The onward charge of Jackson's corps,
Who, louder than the Babel roar
Of fugitives, are yelling.
The old Third corps's a mile away,
Fast pushing forward to the fray,
But Stonewall's corps is nearing.
To live with Fame's heroic dead
A forlorn hope must now be led,
To Death the Union cheering.
Up rode commander Pleasanton,
Align those pieces, man each gun,”
He said; be quick and steady.
Charge, Keenan, charge, upon the foe,
And hold them back until you know
Our batteries are ready."
Brave Keenan, smiling made reply,
"You had as well said I must die;
For yon pine woods are gory.
But you command: I will obey."
They charged, they died; they saved the

day:

They turned the tide of glory. The charging legions of the Gray, Were by three hundred held at bay Until the guns were sighted; Then on they came with louder yell, But they were stopped by shot and shell And Jackson's charge was blighted,

This praying, fighting, brightest star
The rebels had in all the war

Was shot the danger braving.
But treason's guilt his glory mars,
And Fame, above the fallen bars,
Halos the old flag waving.
Three hundred heroes rode away,
Their bodies in the pine woods lay.
Their deed of martial glory,
Though unsurpassed on bloody plains,
Is yet unsung in measured strains,
Nor read in hist'ry's story.
An exit that all men admire,
An exit that the brave desire

Is where the lead is flying.

It is the soldiers' hallowed ground”
To fight in battle and be found

Among the dead or dying.

*John Bright, (England's Quaker Statesman), resigned his place in Gladstone's ministry, because of his war in Africa, but held that our war for liberty and union was justifiable. The law is a terror to evil doers," and must have power to enforce it. Our war was a police force, to enforce the law, and prevent anarchy.

.. PUT UP THY SWORD." There is a field where just men work,

A high untrodden plain, Above the jostling crowd below,

That strive for present gain.

Where men by love of truth inspired
Go forth to work and die,

That God's eternal truth may have
A dwelling 'neath the sky.

The doctors wrangle through the years
On issues past and gone.
A Providential man appears
And truth goes marching on.
O, who will work for God to-day
And let the "dead past” go?
War stays the progress of His truth:
O who will meet this foe?
And blow the Trumpet of Reform"
So loud, so clear, so strong,
"Twill rouse the nations of the world
Against this giant wrong.

The party men have fed the flock
On dogmas' worthless food,
And they have drifted from this rock
Tossed by the passion's flood.
Ye. Five and twenty" chosen men,*
Will ye prepare a creed
Defining sin, proclaiming war

To be the devil's deed?

Make no more creeds in Jesus' name While ye are slaying men,

LOCAL AND NATIONAL POETS OF AMERICA.

For all your bloody fields proclaim

..Ye must be born again."

Your task is greater now than when
Your fathers sailed away.
May Plymouth Rock be typical
Of what ye do to-day.

O may ye build a new Mayflower
To stem the world's rude shock,
Above the passions of the hour
On God's eternal rock.
O, for a faith that overcomes
A faith in God and right.

Then saints would put His armor on
And Christians would not fight.

O, for a Garrison to lead

This moral movement on,
(Untarnished by a selfish deed
Until the work is done.

To stand and wait for God to work,
Shows lack of common sense.
The lazy work their garden thus
And get no recompense.
Are all the virtues waiting for

Some great propelling power?
Are weeds and vice the only things
Not idle for an hour?

Men see this wrong from age to age,
This bloody, damning crime,
And say "mysterious Providence,"
And idle pass their time.

O, sluggish soul arise and work
For truth and right to-day.
A holy purpose kept in view,
And God will show the way.
Your labor may be fruitless now,

You may not live to see

The victory of the Prince of peace.
But what is that to thee?

• Written in 1880, when the theological, if not all lineal descendants of the Pilgrims, in their then late Council at St. Louis had chosen a committee of twenty-five to prepare a creed or interpretation of the Bible.

THE QUAKERS.

A sincere purpose to do right
Proceeding from within,

A walking by the Inward Light

Protects the soul from sin.

George Fox, the Friend, built on this rock.

The building stands secure; The only sect the world's rude shock Has left unstained and pure. They sought the Heavenly Father's care, No thronging crowds around; They bowed their heads in silent prayer, And that is.. holy ground."

No titled men - no useless forms Within their building found; No unpaid toil, no clash of arms, Ah, there is "holy ground."

71

Though men of peace they charged upon The citadel of sin;

Moved by the Holy Spirit on,

They conquered foes within.

They make no compromise to gain

The world's admiring throng;
Their record is without a stain
Of blood, or crime, or wrong.
If Heaven is for those alone
Who have subdued the tares
The enemy of souls hath sown,
What great reward is theirs?
The warlike sects for dogmas fight,
And with the world unite;
Their morals in a rusty plight,
Their fighting weapons bright.
The eagle's claws are on the dove
Since Adam's race begun;

O, Prince of Peace, O God of Love,
When will Thy will be done?

JACOB A. ALFORD,

BORN: KENDALL CO., ILL., FEB. 16, 1865. As editor and publisher of the Colfax Leader, Mr. Alford has written extensively for numerous papers other than his own. In 1889 he went out of the publishing business, and is now a minister of the Methodist church, which profession he intends to follow the remainder of his life.

A NEW YEAR'S CALL.

In his spring-bottom chair, the editor sat,
On new year's day of eighty-nine,
He and Old Webster" were having a .. spat,"
A word how to spell and define.

All of a sudden the door opened wide,
Six belles of the town sallied in,

And surrounded your servant on every side,
Crying. Happy New Year" with a vim.
Dazed with excitement the editor rose,
No sooner this done, than he fell,
His poetic mind all mixed with prose,
His feelings no mortal can tell.

The editor thought of the wife at his home, Who was kneading the small loaf of bread, When she heard of the call, in wrath she would foam,

And apply the old mop to his head. Call again pretty girls, it is true we are wed, But the lad on the stool you can woo, And while you are sparking we'll just bow our head,

We remember when we were there too.

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