the cost.
There's an artist waiting ready at each bleak
and dismal spot
To paint the flashing tulip or the meek forget-me-not.

May is lurking in the distance and her lap is
filled with flowers,
And the choicest of her blossoms very shortly
will be ours.
There is not a lane so dreary or a field so dark
with gloom
But that soon will be resplendent with its little
touch of bloom.
There's an artist keen and eager to make beautiful
each scene
And remove with colors gorgeous every trace of
of what has been.

Oh, the world is now in mourning; round about
us all are spread
The ruins and the symbols of the winter that
is dead.
But the bleak and barren picture very shortly
now will pass,
For the halls of life are ready for their velvet
rugs of grass;
And the painters now are waiting with their
magic to replace
This dullness with a beauty that no mortal hand
can trace.

The green is in the meadow and the blue is in
the sky;
The chill of death is passing, life will shortly
greet the eye.
We shall revel soon in colors only Nature's
artists make
And the humblest plant that's sleeping unto
beauty shall awake.
For there's not a leaf forgotten, not a twig
neglected there,
And the tiniest of pansies shall the royal purple
wear.

{88}

THE HAPPIEST DAYS

You do not know it, little man,
In your summer coat of tan
And your legs bereft of hose
And your peeling, sunburned nose,
With a stone bruise on your toe,
Almost limping as you go
Running on your way to play
Through another summer day,
Friend of birds and streams and trees,
That your happiest days are these.

Little do you think to-day,
As you hurry to your play,
That a lot of us, grown old
In the chase for fame and gold,
Watch you as you pass along
Gayly whistling bits of song,
And in envy sit and dream
Of a long-neglected stream,
Where long buried are the joys
We possessed when we were boys.

Little chap, you cannot guess
All your sum of happiness;
Little value do you place
On your sunburned freckled face;
And if some shrewd fairy came
Offering sums of gold and fame
For your summer days of play,
You would barter them away
And believe that you had made
There and then a clever trade.

Time was we were boys like you,
Bare of foot and sunburned,