If your sole gain has been these “marks of battle,”
If valiant deeds insure no greater claim,
If you are still to be the herder’s cattle,
Then ill spilt blood fell short of Freedom’s aim.
Democracy means more than empty letters,
And Liberty far more than partly free;
Yet, both are void as long as men in fetters
Are at eclipse with Opportunity.
III. George Marion McClellan
George Marion McClellan
Aptly has Mr. McClellan entitled his book of poems The Path of Dreams. A dreamer is he and the home of his spirit is dreamland:
Sweet-scented winds move inward from the shore,
Blythe is the air of June with silken gleams,
My roving fancy treads at will once more
The golden path of dreams.
And that path leads the poet ever back to the golden days of his youth, when Southern suns and Southern moons steeped his very being in dreams and Southern birds gave him their melodies and Southern mountains lifted his soul heavenward. A wanderer upon the earth he appears to have been, and as all wanderers’ hearts turn back to some loved region or spot so his to Dixie. Seldom has the longing for distant, remembered scenes, for spring’s returning and for summer’s glow, been more sweetly expressed in rhyme than in the various poems of The Path of Dreams. And yet, sweeter songs than those are locked up in his breast, not to be sung:
The summer sweetness fills my heart with songs
I cannot sing, with loves I cannot speak.