Verhovayak Lapja, 1940. január-június (23. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)

1940-05-09 / 19. szám

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ENGLISH EDITION

The Spring

Our Tribute to Mother

(The entire youth of the Verhovay Fraternal Insurance Association reverently dedicates the following poem to MOTHER, living symbol of everything that is good and great in man.)

On Mother's Way

Her hands may be careworn and reddened with toil

And her freshness of youth may have flown But there is something that God has repaid for that toil

And that something is all her own.

That something is Love

That your Mother now has ;-it

A Love that is not of Earth given

For her Love is a gift jJ’

That God gave her for you

To keep you and guide you to Heaven.

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She’s an angel of God And she is here just for you When your footsteps are led astray And she’ll pray for you, boy Yes, she’ll pray just for you When your life work has called you away.

Oh, she loves you, my lad

Just because you’re her son

And not because others have praised you

But her heart will be broke

If your game is not won

By the teachings she gave when she raised you.

Just remember this lad ’Tis a truth that’s well known Her place can be filled by no other And when she is gone,

And her troubles are flown

You’ll know what it is to lose—MOTHER.

I confess that today was the first day of this year on which I was quite certain that the Spring had come. For over a week I have been watching the buds and blossoms, green, white, golden, asserting themselves in patient endeavor to persuade a still doubtful world that the winter is over and gone. 1 do not like the winter. I have often tried to explain to myself the attitude of mind of the peoples who have elected to make their homes in those lands where the snow is forever; and I cannot explain it unless by thinking that they have no choice but bitter necessity —that has always kept myself from sudden and speedy flights towards the sunshine of the South when the ice-cold hands of Winter are laid with dulling touch upon these more northern shores. For me to see the Summer go is an annual despair.

But when, at length, the Spring, shy at first as a debutante, and then riotous as a tomboy, steps with glad feet over the roofs of the houses, knocks a.t the window panes, bangs the doors, and calls to me to come out, I am always grateful that I have stayed at home and consented to shiver for so long. They say that as long as one can wax sentimental about the Spring one has not lost one’s youth. If that is true I fear that I am outrageously, shockingly young in spite of my decrepitude. For I, too, like to watch the little leaves that have not yet “out-grown their curly childhood,” wondering what they are and what they will be. I know perfectly well what he meant who wrote.

“In every leaf of every tree Beauty had set a snare for

me,”

for there is nothing in this wide, wide world which affects me so deeply as this annual and unaided triumph of the green and growing things over the sad and sullen earth. I know nothing

that speaks to my heart as well as the slender stalk of shrub or flower pushing aside with gallant energy the grim, gray walls of clay that have held it prisoner so long. Someone has shed poetic tears at hearing the song of birds at twilight in the time of daffodils. But even a weed, I think, at this time has the power to make me weep; and I am sure that at this time even the cawing of a sock is, to me, sweet music.

Now whether or not it is because so many of the mysterious secrets of nature have been lately laid bare to the touch of vulgar hands and the gaze of unseeing eyes, I do not know; but it seems to me that for many the real potency of the charm of Spring has waned. Too many people have learned what it is that makes the grass green, the sky blue, the sunset red. They have studied chemistry. Too many people have learned why the frogs croak and the robins sing and the doves coo. They have studied psychology. Nature has been literally found out and even found to be a hypocrite. And the tree of knowledge continues to bear a bitter fruit; for it is, in my opinion, only petty compensation to have our eyes opened when, because we have opened our eyes we have lost the sense of wonder. But in spite of ell this bold new learning I do keep on hoping that there are still left a few of my generation who are unsophisticated enough to be stirred in the old strange way by the miracle that is the Spring of the year. And I wish I knew what it is that happens to me when I look out these mornings to greet the sun and listen to the tramping feet of the Spring, like those of any army with banners, upon all the highways. I wish I knew; because if I knew I might, perhaps, be able to solve all the other riddles of the earth. Science is an exqui-THE WORLD IS MINE!

Mine is the wandering moon above;

The shining stars are mine—

And summer nights just made for love,

Dancing, friends and wine!

Mine, the soft wind blowing tonight

And the white mists that rise,

And mine the wondrous magical light

Of the love that shines in your eyes!

—Amelia Nyers.

(American First Serial Rights)

site thing. But sometimes I am afraid that the scientists hold their heads too high. In order to really hear the heart beats of the universe it is necessary to keep one’s ear close to the ground.

All this to the contrary I was not, however, until today, quite certain of the advent of the Spring in our midst. And it was neither bud nor blossom that gave me this attitude. It was no lovesick flower pouring out its soul in sweetness as if it longed to leap to liberty from the stalk. It was not even the sheen of the new and brilliant plumage on the bosom of the roosters with which an imaginative next door neighbor seeks to make a sober backyard gay. Nor was it, though it might have been, the vivid impudence in the dark eyes of the chipmunk that led me a merry chase around the stumps of ancient trees. It was the gorgeous gilded glory of the Circus which had come to town. Surely no rose in Sharon, no iris on the Nile, no hibiscus in the varying Gardens at Babylon was ever in raiment robed as resplendently as a circus wagon is arrayed in paint. Surely that tent of blue beneath which are housed the wonders of the world, has, if not in the measure of its far-flung boundaries or the permanence of the pegs that hold it down, at least in multitudinous magic of the content, no mean rival in that other tent, bigger and better than ever, the Big Top as they have

called it, of the Circus. And of this I am certain; I have yet to hear any sound as soul searching, as appealing as the roll and rattle of the circus drums; a spring song or any song that can equal in deep hearted, exuberant joy, the one that is poured in such wild abundance from the brave, brazen throats of the circus trumpets. I do not understand the Spring or the fields or the flowers or the sky. I hope that I shall never understand them. But I understand the Circus. I can walk in the midst of it without any fear of it and with no fear for myself.

M. A. K., C. S. Sp.

DO YOU KNOW

that Major-General Asboth became U. S. minister to South America’s great country, Argentine, that the Hungarian General Pumucz was for years American Consul-General in the capital of Russia, that Ujházy became American consul in Ancoma, Italy, and another U. S. diplomat of Magyar descent, Figyelmessy, consul in Central America?

TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS

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