Why die the beautiful and strong? Why does the great oak fall? Why fades the rose? These fleeting drops Of water outlive them all: Snow, rain or mist--around the world They sweep on tireless wing, Then fall like mother nature’s tears, On the breast of the Old Rock Spring. IV. “How soon we are forgotten clean When we are gone,” quoth Rip, We perish and the stream of death Engulfs the proudest ship; [Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN Hardin County, Kentucky] Gone!--like a faded, broken plume Dropped from an eagle’s wing, Or pebble tossed by a sportive child, In the depths of the Old Rock Spring. V. Some in silence and some in strife, Friends, passed to the dim Unknown, In manhood’s prime or the morn of life, And I am left alone; In vain do I essay a song, On a harp with broken string, While the hot tears trickle down my cheeks, And fall in the Old Rock Spring. A LYRIC FOR LILIAN. I BRING THEE A GARLAND. I bring thee a garland, O, violet-eyed maid Its exquisite bloom in thy dark locks, I braid. Love nourished each flower with a sigh and a tear, And the sigh and the tear Shall make them more dear, And bring them new charms with each vanishing year. I fill thee a goblet--’tis the heart’s purest wine, Fresh foamed from the wine-press of St. Valentine, The Rathskeller holds it which sits in the skies, Whose roseate gleaming Is bright in its beaming, As the love-stars which shine in the heav’n of thine eyes. I bring thee a song, and though humble the strain, Love glows in each word of the burning refrain. And oh, that its notes were as wild and as sweet As the plashing of fountains Or horns on the mountains, Or songs which thy dear lips in warblings repeat. THE STRAWBERRY BOWL [A private and confidential Epistle to Sam Gaines, Editor of the Hopkinsville New Era. Written for the Kentucky Press Association.] God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but certainly he never did.--_Izaak Walton._ YE SALUTATION.