HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD?
December, 1916
What a lack of reason
In this earthly throng!
In and out of season
Everything goes wrong;
Over there in Europe
Kaiser, king and czar,
Raise a mighty flare up,
Plunge a world in war.
Neither king nor kaiser
Down in Mexico,
Are the people wiser?
Echo answers, "No!"
There, contending factions
Murder, pillage, burn;
Plunder and exactions
Everywhere you turn.
Has the world gone crazy?
Are the men all fools?
Is our thinking hazy,
Spite of all our schools?
THE TREES
The wind that through the forest blows
May scatter leaves and blossoms wide.
The parent tree but firmer grows
When by the tempest torn and tried.
The stately oak withstands the storm
That rocks its boughs in fiercest strife;
The winds that shake its sturdy form
But give a deeper, stronger life.