Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1874-03-06
NUMBER rs.
/" Gentle Spring."

EVERY day brings us in the resistless
march of time nearer and nearer the dread
ed days when poems on spring. will be
in order And Yeti seems but yesterday
that the waste baskets groaned with un-
wonted miles of "odes' and idyls" and
greetings" and things TO spring. But
the great pendulum of the world has
swung through another year, and the
heart-breaking affiiction under which
mankind groaned almost a year ago,
which has taken its crushing weight
from the hearts that bled under it when
last the budding spring flowers melted
eleven millions of free-born American
people to write poetry and send it to the
newspapers, is ready to wear out ones
life again. Men of Americai whose hand
writing no created living thing can read,
and whose spelling no dictionary can
justify; women of the Republic, who in
variably write on both sides of the paper,
never indent paragraph, and always
begin every line with little letter, and
sign yourselves Maud"-listen We
are aware that spring is coming. The
calendar of the German Insurance
Company tells us that. We will
also be informed by reliable au-
thority when it is here. We will be glad
of it. We will observe the season with
the most solemn and impressive cere-
monies. We will do all that your poems
on last spring commanded, suggested, en-
treated, and invited us to do. We will
walk down messy paths meath fragrant.
unfolding leafy buds. We will walk
around mile track if it will do you any
good. We will "walk the bee line, Aunt
Jemina, no, ho, ho," even. We will pick
violets in cool, sequestered glens. where
the checkered sunlight falls in tremulous,
interrupted rays, if you insist upon it.
We will pick buttercups, daisies sailors
u-srs, and all other spring flowers; we
will pick our teeth, pick some mans
pocket-old Vanderbilt's, for instance.
We will try to satisfy your alteration for
spring, but dOn't-and we say it kindly
but firmly-dOn't-and we use the word
in its most orthodox sense-don't send us
any poetry on spring Don't do it, If
you must write it, write it and burn it up
at home, where your friends can see you;
they will think better of you for it,
We are aware that this pleading for
immunity from the usual annual deluge
may appear tri1e premature, but we are
also aware that you are at work on that
spring poem now You are adding six
teen additional verses to the one we had
the pleasure OF destroying last year.
Don't send it to us. Sell it to some poor
blind man, who can sing itand blackmail
people into buying his silence, as though
he was member of the Legislature. But
don't complete it with the heartless inten-
ton of sending it here Don't be so de-
liberate in your villainy as that. Cut this
out and paste it into your hat. Get it
"by heart " and recite it as an encore to
your poem, every time you read that sub
lime and beautiful effusion to your friends.
Look at it every time you think of pub
fishing, and you will draw one sad heart
nearer to you in true, grateful affection,
for we will love you, and yearn for you,
and find out your address and try to bor-
row money of you, and do everything
else we can to evince our gratitude
Burlington HdsoA- Eye.