The Minneapolis journal. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1888-1939, 1902-11-22
REJECTED VERSE"

1t is often interesting to discover a new
side to a man. You have known him per-
haps as a business man, you recognize his
business ability, his devotion to his work
and his practical common sense way Of
doing things; it has never occurred to you
that there was another side which he kept
for himself. You have not discovered
that he Is fond Of music, that he excels a S
a musician and that he INDUCES his love
for music in his own home, where q few
intimate friends much enjoy his superior
skill and taste as performer upon some In
strument or as a singer. Or your plain,
blunt calculating business man may be
collector of some kind and have a fad for
books or pictures, or rugs, or something
else that, is not suggested by his daily
walk and conversation" Possibly he may
have a taste for varsifcation and in which
he INDUCES only when he has Withdrawn
from the noise and cares of the days work
and shuts himself up in his library at
home. The receipt of a book entitled
Some Rejected Verse; reveals the fact
that William D. Washburn, Jr., thinks of
other things besides the land business
and politics. The first title in this book
OF verse is New England" in which Mr..
Washburn gives credit to the rock bound
shores" for the development Of that type
Of man and woman which has entered so
strongly into the composition of our
American life. Here are few sample
lines:
I do love the place where stern and resolute.
The people OF my blood firm footed stood where
the redbacked
Folk of England marched forth to Lexington.
There fell those farmers well, and with their
fall
Brought great future to the multitudinous seed
that seethes,
Full nurtured, in the fat realms, rolling west
ward.
see me this, our own our Virgin land
The Arbitrate of Mankind's future Fate; weight.
With Portent to unborn men of distant hen,i-
spheres.
But she to herself be true, hers be the ripest
OF the Cultures that have riped and rotted to
the root
Since man first fought and struggled on this
hostile Earth.
God grant that these, the teemng, robust seed
of farmer
Loins, do never lose the meaning of harsh hills
and fiercer seas
That made their fathers men Of Men.
0 Fates, do not permit that battcning on a fat
And lazy SOIL. they do forget the meaning Of
their Race. 8E .'-
Loose spare sinews now, in Sloth and present
ays,not their strong ancestral mind soft It's
-; sued and i'll :.#s, . .~....
Nurtured wax-because the vine and fig do spring
forth 80. -.
Bountiful beneath careless hand. ..
Another poem is entitled 1.-THE Prairie.'
which he describes as 1.-THE Virgin Maid
| or MOtncF EdTCH IL COnCluQeS WITH tneSe
lines ~ .'.~-
The sun. dipping to the west.
Casts long. level. saffron spears 'npon the crest
OF the Golden Rod and Indian Plume. -
The night wind slips gently DER sad oceans
OF the silent grass. The eere cry .-.,-.. Il.
| OF curlews drifts down mysterious. weird
| From the depths OF Night slow darkening
Upon the land. Strange wisps of spiders web
Drift soft before the breeze. The wild duck
calls :
Languorous. mournfu1 to the mate still gone.
The hare pads softly upon the runway
To its home beneath the Fern.
Wherefore" Is a reverie which leads
the writer to the conclusion that
To the fnll-grown soul can come no after HARM
perhaps good;
At all events. but sweet Darkness and a tired
Resting after all.
"The Man Creed,''-is a plea for equal
justice to the man and woman who have
sinned. 1.-THE Great Big Grown-Up Man.
is boys expression Of the fond antici-
patton he cherishes of that dream which is
to come to him when he is "big grown
up man.
There are ten different titles in the VOL
ume; the subjects treated covering quite
wide range of thought and form of ex-
preston.