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Jingles

Chapter 9: Alone
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About This Book

A compact collection of short lyrical poems and light verse that shifts between playful sketches and earnest meditations. Recurring subjects include love and courtship, reflections on youth and aging, solitude, and small-town or frontier life. Several pieces celebrate natural settings such as the sea and mountain landscapes, using vivid but plain diction. Some poems employ humor and character sketches to portray everyday figures, while others dwell on memory, loss, and the passage of time. The overall tone balances simple, rhythmic lines with reflective and occasionally wistful moods.

Alone

It’s queer how the seasons affect us sometimes,
And how incidents turn our attention to rhymes,
How sentiment (foolish as most superstition),
Seem very sane under certain conditions.
So when one’s alone at this time of year,
How gloomy we feel when the holiday’s here;
We think that our life is not worth the living
And forget to give thanks on the day of Thanksgiving.
Perchance, when we dine, if it be alone,
We’ll crave for the place that we love to call home.
Be angry because other people are glad
While enjoying the pleasures we often have had.
We should think of the blessings we have even now,
And be thankful for life and for health, anyhow;
Be thankful we have our bread and our meat,
There’s many poor creatures have nothing to eat.
It’s queer that in most every case we forget
To give thanks for our many blessings—and yet
Unless we have all that our hearts have desired,
We’re ungrateful for that which we have acquired.
There’s always something we wish to obtain,
Or something we’ve lost that we want to regain;
Some hope that has vanished, some love that has flown
And taught us the meaning of that word, alone.