The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1911-12-10
The Singer of the South
NEW YORK POST.

Frank J.. Stanton, the Georgia news
paper poet, whose verses, They've
Hung Bill JONES'" are credited with
effecting the communication of a death
sentence in Oregon the other day
after which the warden gave the
respited man a dinner party in his pri-
waite office and bits OF the unemployed
rope were distributed as souvenirs
has been writing stanzas to head the
Just from Georgia" column in the
Atlanta Constitution for years.
Stanton was friend Of joel Chan
der Harris, who once said OF him:
Meanwhile here Is one with the dew
of morning on his hair. who looks on
life and the promise thereof and finds
the prospect joyous. Whereupon he
lifts up his voice and speaks to the
heart; and To- here is Love with MIN
BILE feet and sparkling eyes; and here
10 Hope, fresh risen from his sleep,
and here is Life made beautiful
again
All of which is high praise for man
who has been writing rhymes to lead
a daily newspaper column, and yet is
not altogether undeserved.
In many ways Stanton reminds the
haphazard reader of James Whitcomb
Riley. There is the same easy, col
loquial touch in most of the verses he
HTlLESt d4luOuBn I4OW anu lAACI, db IL
he said to himself that it was to pro
coed to business and turn out bit of
real poetry" ne buckles down to the
-efforted product and displays an
impressive serious mindedness which,
however, Is wiped away by the next
page where ''wishin . is jauntily
rhymed with fish" and watermelons
and summer sunshine seem to be the
chief ingredients of the southern muse.
stanton is never dull. He loves the
warmth of June the chatter of even
the noisiest birds, and the atmosphere
of not working too hard. Doesn't he
say:
o summer time in Geory-I love to
sing your praise!
Though I've got no voice for singin :,
it's tune love to raise'
When the birds is pantin', chantin',
an jest rantin' roun' the rills,
With the juice o. ripe blackberries jest
a-drippin' from their bills.
His volume, Songs OF the Soil.'
tains some of his best work. In the
verses, Night in the South one
quatrain is:
And yet-so still is all
That if a birds nest slipped its airy
tether
There would be no sound and feeling
in the fall
OF one light feather.
Jim Riley once wrote:
And up through the rifted treetops
That signaled the wayward breeze,
I saw the bulk of a hawk becalmed,
Far out on the azure seas.
This is second cousin of Stanton's
quatrain. Take the second stanza of
Not Melancholy" which runs:
These amt the melancholy days-not
much they're full o. life,
An you're thankful fer your sweet
heart, an you praise God fer
your wife.
An then. on general principIes-in
view OF what He given
You shout a hallelujah fer the priu-
lege o. livin'.
When Jim Was Dead" tells how the
wife of q never do well changed the
attitude of village. It starts:
When Jim was dead
1T sarved him right" the neighbors
said,
An 'bused him for the life he'd led.
But when the wife leaned over and
kissed the dead man, and sobbed that
he had always been good to her,
Stanton says:
I ten you when that came to light
II sorTer set the dead man right.
The Atlanta newspaper poet has
never written anything that has been
copied mTe-and his stanzas are daily
loot in a hundred exchange rooms
than "Wearyin' fer YOU" which con-
tains the following:
Jest a wearyin' fer you
All the time a-feeIin' blue;
Wishfn' fer you-wonderin when
You'll be comm home again:
Resuess-don't know what to do
jest a-wearyin' fer you.
Just to show swhat Stanton thinks of
his brother singer, read:
But Jim's the same old Riley, an he
sings from left to right,
TIL he sets the world to music an Jest
tangles it in light;
An 80, Ii amt no wonder that they
put him down in books,
Like the blessed one he sent me from
Green Fields and Running
Brooks"
THE Raggedy Man." or Riley's "Old