Why Should Mortals Wonder

If radio's slim fingers
Can pluck a melody
From night and toss it over
A continent or sea;

If the petaled white notes
Of a violin
Are blown across a mountain,
Or a city's din;

If songs like crimson roses,
Are plucked from thin blue air,
Why should mortals wonder,
If God hears prayer?

What You Give

It's only a memory
That you grow old.
Your body is an annual
Like marigold.

Your friends remember you the best
By deeds, not years,
By joys you scatter on the way
To banish tears.

It's not the years that count as much
As how you live.
It's not the things you got from life
But what you give!

Happiness

He can bear to die,
He who has once been happy.

Never Say Die!

Never say die, say Damn!
It isn't classic, it may be profane,
But we mortals have need of it,
Time and again.

And you'll find you'll recover
From fate's hardest slam
If you never say die, say Damn!

Great Pain

After great pain, a formal feeling comes,
The nerves sit, ceremonious, like tombs.

Grandeur

So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When duty whispers low, thou must,
The youth replies, I can.
- - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each Lovely Day

God let me live each lovely day,
So I may know, that come what may,
I've done my best, to live the way,
You want me to.

Forgive me if I do not pray,
In church on every Sabbath day;
The ultra-sanctimonious way,
As some folks do.

Just let me know if I should stray,
That I may stop along the way;
At any time of night or day,
And talk to You.

Progress

Toward what far end
I move, I do not know,
And just as long as I may go
On with the trend
Of things, I do not care --

Learning all that I can grasp
At anytime and anywhere,
Doing what is to be done,
From sun to sun --

Accepting gratefully the clasp
Of any joy and if pain comes,
To try to bear it gallantly
In mind and heart;

For either happiness or sorrow
Is each a part
Of growing toward a finer tomorrow --

For growing through both good and ill
Means progress, never standing still!

Vision

No vision and you perish;
No ideal, and you're lost;
Your heart must ever cherish
Some faith at any cost.

Some hope, some dream to cling to,
Some rainbow in the sky,
Some melody to sing to,
Some service that is high.

Circles

He drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him in!

Wicked Books

A wicked book gathers no dust.

Short Poem

Short Poem:

I...
Why?

No Man Shares His Pipe

Bad men want their women
To be like cigarettes,
Just so many, all slender and trim,
In a case,
Waiting in a row,
To be selected, set aflame,
And when their flame has died,
Discarded.

More fastidious men
Prefer women like cigars.
These are more exclusive,
Look better and last longer,
If the brand os good,
They aren't given away.

Good men treat women
Like pipes.
And become more attached to them
The older they become!
When the flame is burnt out,
They still look after them,
Knock them gently (but lovingly),
And care for them always -
No man shares his pipe.

Our Heads

If our heads were put up at auction, the bids of our best friends would greatly disappoint us.

Perils Of Thinking

A centipede was happy quite,
Until a frog in fun,
Said, "Pray, which leg comes after which?"
This raised her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in the ditch,
Considering how to run.

A Fish

A fish seems very sad to me,
No matter what its trouble,
It opens up its mouth to moan,
And just emits - a bubble.

God Made The World

God made the world and rested,
God made man and rested,
Then God made woman.
Since then, neither God nor man has rested.

Who Loves The Rain

Who loves the rain,
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes,
Him I will follow through the storm;
And at his hearth-fire keep me warm,
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,
Who loves the rain,
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes.

Home Joys

Home joys are known in simple things,
In friends that share a cup of tea,
In books that waken old, old dreams,
And songs that stir the memory.

This World

This world that we're a-livin' in
Is mighty hard to beat;
You git a thorn with every rose,
But ain't the roses sweet!

To Those Who Love Us

Here's to those who love us,
And here's to those who don't,
A smile for those who are willing to,
And a tear for those who won't.

Beware

Beware lest thou
Get what thou desire
- - - and with it
Hell fire!

A Wise Old Owl

A wise old owl sat in an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke,
The less he spoke the more he heard,
Why can't we be like that old bird!

In The Battle That Goes On Through Life

Dear Lord, in the battle that goes on through life,
A courage to strive and to dare,
And if I should win let it be by the code,
With my faith and my honor held high,
And if I should lose let me stand by the road,
And cheer as the winners go by!

If You Want A Thing Bad Enough

If You Want A Thing Bad Enough

So go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it,
If only desire of it,
Makes you quite mad enough never to tire of it,
Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it,
If life seems all empty and useless without it,
And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,
If gladly you sweat for it,
Fret for it,
Plan for it,
Lose all your terror of God or man for it,
If you'll simply go after that thing that you want,
With all your capacity,
Strength and sagacity,
Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,
If neither cold, poverty, famished and gaunt,
Nor sickness nor pain,
Of body or brain,
Can turn you away from the thing that you want,
If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,
You'll get it!

God Grant Me The Serenity

This Spiral Notebook was my Dad's. Compiled in the late 1930s or early 1940s, it starts with:

"To Wally - There's Love In Them Thar' Pages... From Jess Nolan"

Wally was my Dad, Wallace M. DeLong. Jess Nolan was... well, I'm not exactly aure. It was a tough time then; my Dad was going through the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. As I recall my Aunt Mary Lou saying, Jess Nolan was someone who was keen on my Dad, but the feeling wasn't quite mutual. That's what she said, anyway.

The ending of the Spiral Notebook says something diffeent, however, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it:

"Wally - Thank you again, for inspiring me to look up, & read & copy, all these lovely verses etc. Reading them, & putting them down for you, has helped me too. This time, I saw them through different eyes. LOVE YOU! JESS NOLAN."

Was it a mutual agreement that they have this to remember each by? Or something else?

My Dad was born March 30, 1910. I have no idea if she's even still around; my Dad passed away in 1980, just shy of his 70th birthday. If you've searched for Jess Nolan and have found this blog, please let me know so I can fill in these blanks.

There aren't any titles to the pages, nor of each verse or entry. But I will have a photo of the page to go along with each.

We begin tomorrow with the first page...

Dad's Spiral Notebook

I don't know how I came to have this in my possession. Obviously it had been my Dad's; maybe I thought it of great enough significance that I should keep it under wraps.

OK. that's not entirely true. Until the last few years, it was out in the open, in a box somewhere. And in the last few years, it has been in a plastic, static-protective bag with a pack of desiccant, lest too much more happen to it. But that, sadly, isn't even enough. In fact, as I removed it from its bag just now, another bit of its cover flaked off.

I'd meant to do something with this little book in the last little while. As I'm off on holiday on a business trip this week, and have plenty of time to kill, I figured it is time to commit this to the internet.

I know not if any of what's written in the book is public domain or not. In some places, a citation is made as to the original source, but most do not have attribution. If you see something that needs attribution, or are a copyright holder of the work, I'll gladly remove it if you wish. But as the compiler of this work notes, it meant enough to them to write it down; why not leave it for future generations in a form they'll be sute to read?

So we begin. Each entry will be posted on an individual day. Unlike a traditional blog, however, this work isn't open-ended. There will be an end to these posts, though I don't know when that will be. I never counted the number of entries. Maybe I'll update this Introduction later. Or not. THAT part is open-ended.