SPIDER-WEBS IN VERSE
A COLLECTION OF
LYRICS FOR LEISURE MOMENTS
SPUN AT IDLE HOURS
BY
CHARLES WILLIAM WALLACE
Professor of Rhetoric and Literature Western Normal College
LINCOLN, NEB.:
STATE JOURNAL COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1892.
Copyright 1892
BY
C. W. WALLACE
TO
JUDGE T. D. WALLACE
AND
MRS. OLIVE WALLACE.
My Dear Father and Mother:
No word, no act, no consecrated gift of mine, how great or slightsoever it may be, can ever repay the beneficence and love of you towhom I owe life and whatever of prosperity has been granted me.
As my eyes glance in retrospect along the fading perspective of yearsand lose themselves in the dim days of the cradle, and thence to thepresent look forwards to the distant peaks of hope that rise aboveunknown mists and shadows and horizons, I hear the counseling wordsof a father, and feel the ever-present touch of a mother’s hand, asboth guide me with love into the dim unknown of life. Though I passonwards with a father’s “God-speed,” and a mother’s lingering embraceand loving kiss, and leave you both fondly looking after me, still yourpresence in my memory is ever a guiding reality that even now directsthis good right hand of mine to inscribe these dedicatory words offilial affection.
If in the days agone I ever seemed unheeding of that counsel ofa father, and unmindful of that dearest love of a cherished andcherishing mother, I can but say that[iv] both that counsel and that lovereach through those moulding and shaping years of my life and take holdon my heart with a firmness and a gentleness that nothing else of allthe years can boast.
It is but right and just, therefore, that in these your later daysI should likewise be your guide and your stay in so far as my handmay let;—that I should reach out my strong young arm and steady thetottering years that throng around you.
Withal, if I can afford you even one slight pleasure, it is my heart’sdesire so to do. It is, therefore, with somewhat more than filial lovethat I dedicate this little volume to you, my Father and my Mother,both together my counselor and guide, still mercifully spared to yourchildren; and in doing so, I can but express the hope that your yearsmay yet be many and happy; that the iris struck by a New Sun from thecrystals of the whitened and whitening wintry years may be as full ofbeauty and joy as were the early spring blossoms of love and hope thatyou pressed to your bosoms in youth.
Your Son,
CHARLES.
BY THE WAY.
As the presentation of these collected verses in their present printedform has been induced largely