



Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive









UP IN MAINE

Stories of Yankee Life Told in Verse

By Holman F. Day

With an Introduction by C. E. Littlefield

Boston: Small, Maynard & Company

1900

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     TO MY FRIEND

     AND FELLOW IN THE CRAFT OF LETTERS

     WINFIELD M. THOMPSON

     TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED
     FOR MORE THAN ONE OF THE STORIES
     TOLD HEREIN

     THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED




PREFACE


               I don’t know how to weave a roundelay,

               I couldn’t voice a sighing song of love;

               No mellow lyre that on which I play;

               I plunk a strident lute without a glove.


               The rhythm that is running through my stuff

                   Is not the whisp of maiden’s trailing gown;

               The metre, maybe, gallops rather rough,

               Like river-drivers storming down to town.


               --It’s more than likely something from the

                        wood,

               Where chocking axes scare the deer and

                        moose;

               A homely rhyme, and easy understood

                   --An echo from the weird domain of Spruce.


               Or else it’s just some Yankee notion, dressed

                   In rough-and-ready “Uncle Dudley” phrase;

               Some honest thought we common folks suggest,

                   --Some tricksy mem’ry-flash from boyhood’s

                        days.


               I cannot polish off this stilted rhyme

                   With all these homely notions in my brain.

               A sonnet, sir, would stick