Smith’s famous poem was published in the Christian Union (June 18, 1873) over the initials “B. S.” After someone set it to music, it quickly became a favorite among singers and reciters at country fairs and church socials. Because it was widely printed anonymously, or credited to others, several false claimants popped out of the woodwork.
Chief among the claimants was Irvine Dungan, a prominent attorney and politician in Jackson, Ohio. Confronted with evidence of the poem’s publication in 1873, he “laughed heartily,” as one newspaper put it, and said he had recited the poem as early as 1867 in the town’s courthouse. Investigation showed there was no courthouse in 1867, the building having burned down seven years earlier.
Benjamin Franklin King (1857–1894), who signed his light verse “Ben King,” is another one-time poet. Sadly, his only claim to fame rests on a parody of Smith’s poem.
If I Should Die To-night
If I should die to-night,
My friends would look upon my quiet face
Before they laid it in its resting-place,
And deem that death had left it almost fair;
And, laying snow-white flowers against my hair,
Would smooth it down with tearful tenderness,
And fold my hands with lingering caress,—
Poor hands, so empty and so cold to-night!
If I should die to-night,
My friends would call to mind with loving thought
Some kindly deed the icy hands had wrought,
Some gentle word the frozen lips had said,
Errands on which the willing feet had sped;
The memory of my selfishness and pride,
My hasty words would all be put aside,
And so I should be loved and mourned to-night.
If I should die to-night,
Even hearts estranged would turn once more to me,
Recalling other days remorsefully;
The eyes that chill me with averted glance
Would look upon me as of yore, perchance,
And soften in the old familiar way,
For who could war with dumb, unconscious clay?
So I might rest, forgiven of all to-night.
Oh, friends! I pray to-night,
Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow:
The way is lonely, let me feel them now.
Think gently of me; I am travelworn;
My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn.
Forgive, oh, hearts estranged, forgive, I plead!
When dreamless rest is mine I shall not need
The tenderness for which I long to-night.
If I Should Die To-night (by Ben King)
If I should die to-night,
And you should come to my cold corpse and say,
Weeping and heartsick o’er my lifeless clay—
If I should die to-night,
And you should come in deepest grief and woe—
And say: “Here’s that ten dollars that I owe,”
I might arise in my large white cravat
And say, “What’s that?”
If I should die to-night,
And you should come to my cold corpse and kneel,
Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel,
I say, if I should die to-night,
And you should come to me, and there and then
Just even hint at paying me that ten,
I might arise the while,
But I’d drop dead again.
FRANK LEBBY STANTON
(1857—1927)
BORN IN CHARLESTON, South Carolina, Stanton settled in Atlanta where he wrote a popular column, “Just from Georgia,” for The Atlanta Constitution. His patriotic, inspirational, sentimental verse was collected in books with such tides as Songs of the Soil, Comes One with a Song, Songs from Dixie Land, Up From Georgia and Little Folks Down South.
I have here selected his best-recalled inspirational poem and a lyric that became famous when Ethelbert Nevin, in 1901, set it to music. It is easy to remember a popular song, but who bothers to learn who wrote the words or the melody? I do not know where these two poems were first printed, or in what books they were first included.
If you are interested in popular verse of the “Keep a-Goin” sort, I recommend the anthology It Can Be Done: Poems of Inspiration, edited by Joseph Morris and St. Clair Adams (1921). My copy is a thirty-first printing. A companion volume by the same authors, Facing Forward: Poems of Courage, followed in 1925.
Keep a-Goin!
If you strike a thorn or rose,
Keep a-goin!
If it hails or if it snows,
Keep a-goin!
‘Taint no use to sit an’ whine
When the fish ain’t on your line;
Bait your hook an’ keep a-tryin’—
Keep a-goin!
When the weather kills your crop,
Keep a-goin!
Though ‘tis work to reach the top,
Keep a-goin!
S’pose you’re out o’ ev’ry dime,
Gittin’ broke ain’t any crime;
Tell the world you’re feelin’ prime—
Keep a-goin!
When it looks like all is up,
Keep a-goin!
Drain the sweetness from the cup,
Keep a-goin!
See the wild birds on the wing,
Hear the bells that sweetly ring,
When you feel like singin’, sing—
Keep a-goin!
Sweetes’ Li’l’ Feller
Sweetes’ li’l’ feller,
Everybody knows;
Dunno what to call him,
But he mighty lak’ a rose!
Lookin’ at his Mammy
Wid eyes so shiny blue,
Mek’ you think that heav’n
Is comin’ clost ter you!
W‘en he’s dar a-sleepin’,
In his li’l’ place,
Think I see de angels
Lookin’ through de place.
W’en de dark is fallin’,
W’en de shadders creep,
Den dey comes on tiptoe
Ter kiss ’im in his sleep.
Sweetes’ li’l’ feller,
Everybody knows;
Dunno what to call ’im,
But he mighty lak’ a rose!
Lookin’ at his Mammy
Wid eyes so shiny blue,
Mek’ you think that heav’n
Is comin’ clost ter you!
GEORGE WASHINGTON STEVENS
(1866—1926)
THIS AMUSING TRIBUTE to church organists is by a Utica (New York)-born man who worked a few years on the staff of the Toledo Times before becoming director of the Toledo Museum of Art, a post he held until his death.
Stevens’s books of poetry include The King and the Harper and Other Poems and Things. I haven’t checked them to find out whether the organist is male or female in Stevens’s original version. Hazel Felleman, in her Best Loved Poems of the American People, has him a man, but in The Speaker’s Garland 10, no. 38 (1914), the organist is a woman.
The Organist
I wonder how the organist
Can do so many things;
He’s getting ready long before
The choir stands up and sings;
He’s pressing buttons, pushing stops,
He’s pulling here and there,
And testing all the working parts
While listening to the prayer.
He runs a mighty big machine,
It’s full of funny things;
A mass of boxes, pipes and tubes
And sticks and slats and strings;
There’s little whistles for a cent
In rows and rows and rows;
I’ll bet there’s twenty miles of tubes
As large as garden hose.
There’s scores as large as stovepipes and
There’s lots so big and wide
That several little boys I
know
Could play around inside.
From little bits of piccolos
That hardly make a toot
There’s every size up to the great
Big elevator chute.
The organist knows every one
And how they ought to go;
He makes them rumble like a storm,
Or plays them sweet and low;
At times you think them very near;
At times they’re soaring high,
Like angel voices, singing far
Off, somewhere in the sky.
For he can take this structure, that’s
As big as any house,
And make it squeak as softly as
A tiny little mouse;
And then he’ll jerk out something with
A movement of the hand,
And make you think you’re listening to
A military band.
He plays it with his fingers and
He plays it with his toes,
And if he really wanted to
He’d play it with his nose;
He’s sliding up and down the bench,
He’s working with his knees;
He’s dancing round with both his feet
As lively as you please.
I always like to take a seat
Where I can see him go;
He’s better than a sermon, and
He does me good, I know;
I like the life and movement and
I like to hear him play;
He is the most exciting thing
In town on Sabbath day
WILLIAM LEROY STIDGER
(1885—1949)
REVEREND STIDGER, born in Moundsville, West Virginia, was one of the nation’s most influential Methodist ministers, serving as pastor of churches in San Francisco, Detroit and other cities. He was a popular radio preacher and poet, and author of a syndicated newspaper column titled “How to Get the Most Out of Life.” Among his dozens of books, mostly about religion, were biographies of Henry Ford and the poet Edwin Markham.
“I Saw God Wash the World” is the title poem of a 1934 volume, one of his several books of verse. Although Granger’s Index to Poetry lists sixteen of his poems, you won’t find him mentioned in any major reference on twentieth-century authors.
I Saw God Wash the World
I saw God wash the world last night
With his sweet showers on high,
And then, when morning came, I saw
Him hang it out to dry.
He washed each tiny blade of grass
And every trembling tree;
He flung his showers against the hill,
And swept the billowing sea.
The white rose is a cleaner white,
The red rose is more red,
Since God washed every fragrant face
And put them all to bed.
There’s not a bird, there’s not a bee
That wings along the way
But is a cleaner bird and bee
Than it was yesterday.
I saw God wash the world last night.
Ah, would He had washed me
As clean of all my dust and dirt
As that old white birch tree.
CARLYLE FAHLSWORTH STRAUB
(1898—1950)
I FIRST CAME across this gutsy lyric in a 1918 anthology titled Songs of Men, edited by Robert Frothingham. In the foreword he calls the poem “an anonymous bit of verse written especially for this anthology by one of our best-known poets.” The poem turns up in later anthologies, always with the byline “unknown.”
I was surprised to encounter the poem in a 1927 book, Songs of a Sinner, by Carlyle Fahlsworth Straub. An acknowledgment page thanks twenty-eight magazines and newspapers for allowing poems to be reprinted. In his book Straub retitles his poem “The God of Grit,” and alters it much for the worse. The first line is replaced by “I sing of the God with the craw of grit.” “Snatch a friend,” several lines later, becomes “save a friend”; “Swallow the pill” is now “Swallow the last,” and “Tell a pal” is “tell a friend.” The entire final stanza of eight lines has given way to a pallid couplet:
So I sing my song to the God of Grit;
The tolerant God who’ll never quit.
And now for a small enigma which perhaps a reader can solve. The birth and death dates for Straub, given above, are based on the assumption that he is the Carlyle Fahlsworth Straub who was arrested in New York City in 1950 for swindling a printer out of $550 for falsely claiming he had been authorized to write a book about horse racing. According to a story in the New York Times (January 26, 1950, page 50), Straub was a “society bootlegger” who had eight previous arrests. In 1944 he had been sentenced to 2½ years in Sing Sing for swindling Cartier jewelers. He claimed to have once studied professional dancing under the famous Vernon Castle. A brief obituary in the New York Times (February 25, 1950, page 30) reported his death (no cause given) in Bellevue Hospital before his case came to court. His age was 52.
No mention is made in either story of Straub having written poetry. It seems impossible that two New Yorkers would have the same unusual name of Carlyle Fahlsworth Straub, yet it seems equally unlikely that the author of the poems in Songs of a Sinner could be a criminal.
If Straub the poet was indeed Straub the sinner, who beat a jail sentence by dying in midwinter, the following lyric from his book of verse would have made an appropriate epitaph:
Birth.
A day of joy,
A day of sorrow.
Friends today,
Foes tomorrow.
Clouds without a silver lining,
Sweetness of a summer’s breath,
Castles wrecked;
Love repining;
Winter’s cold—
Death.
The Little Red God
Here ’s a little red song to the god of guts,
Who dwells in palaces, brothels, huts;
The little Red God with the craw of grit;
The god who never learned how to quit;
He is neither a fool with a frozen smile,
Or a sad old toad in a cask of bile;
He can dance with a shoe-nail in his heel
And never a sign of his pain reveal;
He can hold a mob with an empty gun
And turn a tragedy into fun;
Kill a man in a flash, a breath,
Or snatch a friend from the claws of death;
Swallow the pill of assured defeat
And plan attack in his slow retreat;
Spin the wheel till the numbers dance,
And bite his thumb at the god of Chance;
Drink straight water with whisky-soaks,
Or call for liquor with temperance folks;
Tearless stand at the graven stone,
Yet weep in the silence of night, alone;
Worship a sweet, white virgin’s glove,
Or teach a courtesan how to love;
Dare the dullness of fireside bliss,
Or stake his soul for a wanton’s kiss;
Blind his soul to a woman’s eyes
When she says she loves and he knows she lies;
Shovel dung in the city mart
To earn a crust for his chosen art;
Build where the builders all have failed,
And sail the seas that no man has sailed;
Run a tunnel or dam a stream,
Or damn the men who financed the dream;
Tell a pal what his work is worth,
Though he lose his last, best friend on earth;
Lend the critical monkey-elf
A razor—hoping he ’ll kill himself;
Wear the garments he likes to wear,
Never dreaming that people stare;
Go to church if his conscience wills,
Or find his own—in the far, blue hills.
He is kind and gentle, or harsh and gruff;
He is tender as love—or h
e ’s rawhide tough;
A rough-necked rider in spurs and chaps,
Or well-groomed son of the town—perhaps;
And this is the little Red God I sing,
Who cares not a wallop for anything
That walks or gallops, that crawls or struts,
No matter how clothed—if it has n’t guts.
JANE TAYLOR
(1783—1824)
JANE TAYLOR is best remembered today for her lyric that begins “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,” which I included in Best Remembered Poems along with information about her life. She and her sister Ann wrote many poems more widely read and quoted in their day than “The Star.”
“The Philosopher’s Scales,” here offered, was one of Taylor’s poems that can be found in dozens of nineteenth-century collections of popular verse.
When Burton Stevenson included the poem in his Home Book of Verse, he left out the eighth stanza—perhaps because he didn’t know who Howard was—as well as the moralizing stanza at the end. (John Howard [1726-1790] was a British philanthropist and penal reformer.)
The Philosopher’s Scales
A monk, when his rites sacerdotal were o’er,
In the depths of his cell with its stone-covered floor,
Resigning to thought his chimerical brain,
Famous Poems from Bygone Days Page 17