[Illustration: S. C. MERCER] POEMS BY S. C. MERCER [Illustration: text decoration] Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito --_Virgil_ [Illustration: text decoration] LOUISVILLE JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY INCORPORATED 1908 Copyright, 1908, BY S. C. MERCER FOREWORD. The poems here collected are in the main reprints of pieces that originally appeared in various newspapers and periodicals, beginning with the Louisville Journal in the late ’50s. This newspaper was at that time edited by the brilliant George D. Prentice, my personal friend, who a few years after I had left college offered me the assistant editorship of his paper. The imperative duty which at that time I owed to others forced me to decline this offer, although for many years I wrote editorials and verses for this then powerful and widely read journal. Many of the poems here collected have appeared in the columns of the Louisville daily papers and have been copied in other journals, North and South, and in poetic collections. Others were first printed in the Nashville Press and Times, of which I was editor during my two terms as Public Printer of Tennessee, during the administrations of Military Governor Andrew Johnson and of Governor Brownlow in the days of Reconstruction. It will be noticed that the partisan poems breathe the spirit of the times in which they were written--the stormy ’60s--but I have not thought it wise to change their tone, they being now only the record of a long-since departed day. There has been some controversy as to the authorship of the poem “The Angel of the Hospital,” owing to a manuscript copy of this poem being found on the body of a young Confederate officer killed in one of the battles in Georgia, and from which the poem was reprinted in many of the Southern newspapers. I had previously, however, printed it in the Louisville Journal, and as newspapers were scarce in the South at that time, the unfortunate youth must have copied the verses before passing the newspaper on to his comrades. THE AUTHOR. Hopkinsville, June 30, 1908. INDEX PAGE The Two Kentuckians 1 The Hunter’s Last Ride 6 The Old Rock Spring 10 A Lyric for Lilian 11 The Strawberry Bowl 12