Charles Burleigh Galbreath 135
The final phase.
But why delay the bitter truth--
The story of my pride and fall--
The transit from my vernal youth
To wreckage sad and skeletal,
Spurned by the feet of passers-by,
An outcast in the mire and rain,
Unworthy of a passing sigh
And dead alike to joy or pain?
Fair maiden, speed--I ask no more--
My flight aloft on fiery wings
To Nature's mighty reservoir--
The goal of all material things,
Your hope serene I may not claim
Of joys supernal yet to be,
Mine be the pride, refined by flame,
That I was once a Christmas Tree.
* NOTE: Suggested by a young woman in
the act of throwing the rem-
nant of a Christmas tree on a burning rubbish heap. The
tree asks per-
mission to tell its story before it is consigned to the
flames.
OHIO
Ohio, bounteous state,
Home of the fair and great,
We hail thy name!
Star of the Middle West,
Gem in the Nation's crest,
Land that we love the best,
We sing thy fame!
Land of the clement skies,
Of rosy morning dyes
And sunset bars,
Of streams and woodland bowers,
Of fruit and grain and flowers,
Of quiet evening hours
And rising stars!
The fire of genius runs
In thy inventive sons,
And they have furled
136 Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications
The shadows of the night
By magic of their might
And with electric light
Illume the world.1
Thy sons are bold to soar
On airways to explore
Celestial things.
They rise to dizzy height,
They bask in higher light
And scorn the eagle's flight
On swifter wings.2
Ohio, bounteous state,
Home of the brave and great,
Of faith sublime;
Pride of the great Northwest,
Heart in the Nation's breast,
State we would make the best
Through endless time!
(Copyrighted, 1931, by C. B.
Galbreath. All rights reserved.)
1 Charles Francis Brush and Thomas
Edison invented respectively the
arc and the incandescent electric
lights.
2 The
Wright Brothers, Wilbur and Orville, invented the first suc-
cessful airplane.
Brush, Edison and Orville Wright were
born in Ohio.
ECHO VALE
Our words and actions never fail
A sure return as joys or ills;
This world is all an echo vale
Between the mute eternal hills.
Our life we make a field or fen,
We fill our days with bliss or bale;
What we give forth comes back again,
This world is all an echo vale.