In looking through my scrapbooks, I found some poems that go back about sixty years, so you may not have read them. Most of you are probably not that old.

Anyway, I have reworded a few of them, and have titled them, "Cacoethes Scribendi." In English it means "Itch for Writing."

"Cacoethes Scribendi"

Vagrant thoughts that sought expression,

Pounding madly in my brain,

Caused this book to be assembled;

May it not be all in vain.

Some will call it bad--puerile;

Some (I hope) will call it fair;

Some will sadly scan the meter.

What they say I do not care.

Let shades of Chaucer, Keats and Browning,

Shakespeare, Burns and others, too,

Squirm with righteous indignation.

They are dead--what can they do?

Growth

When one becomes mature, he does not live;

When he is satisfied with being grown

And settles down to take what life may give,

That man is just an inert mass of bone

And flesh and blood. Maturity--the word

Means naught for him whose mind is keen

To seek and grasp new things. It is absurd

To think that Learning's plate has been

licked clean.

Begin to grow! Shake off the mental dust!

Bestir lethargic cells within your brain!

If you are young, if you are old, you must

Continue growing. Then the mental rain

Will nourish and enrich each thing you do,

And you will be ALIVE till life is through.

Greed

Machines are chewing, swallowing

materials their feeders give

to them. The slaves who sate the gnaw

of hunger in the maw of huge

unending rows of wheels and cogs

perspire and drive their aching thews

to greater toil to keep the pace

unchecked. The excrement pours forth

from out the throbbing monsters made

of steel, and pile by pile it grows

until the place is crammed with it.

No room for more, no place to send

the stuff the grinding wheels rolled out.

The monsters sleep. Their pace has been

too furious. But what about

the sweating men who fed the greed

engendered by their headlong gait?

No matter what becomes of them;

the monsters' greed is satisfied,

so those who fed them now may take

a rest--perhaps a week, a month,

a year. Of course, they get no pay

while the monsters' maws are full. Just wait

until the pangs of hunger hit

the cogs and wheels of trade again.

Then, if the slaves have not been starved,

they'll feed again the mad machines.

The Beauty of Irregularity

Stately trees in an even row

With trunks as straight as sunbeams go,

A picture made by man--just so--

Have no appeal for me.

I look for trees with twisted boles;

Old cedars, bent and full of holes,

Or cypresses like totem poles,

Are what I want to see.

A row of tulips neat and straight,

Or round or square beds--these I hate;

And rows of sweetpeas by the gate--

These horrors I despise.

But goldenrod along a lane,

Swamp marigolds and harebells plain,

and riant cosmos drenched with rain

Are lovely to my eyes.

Boundaries

Boundaries do not exist.

Counties, parishes, townships, shires,

States and nations are bounded

By lines more imaginary that the equator

Or the lines of latitude and longitude.

God recognizes no man-made confines

As He launches His ever-beginning

And ever-dissolving phases of weather.

Fleecy clouds, huge mountains of clouds,

Dark, foreboding cyclone clouds,

Pursue their appointed courses,

Passing with no difficulty whatever

From France to Germany,

From Mexico to America,

From China to Chosen to Japan;

For them, boundaries are not.

Man's social and financial boundaries have no being.

Paupers and peasants and plebeians

Are considered as set apart

From those more fortunate mortals

Who were born to, or have been elevated to

Higher and more exalted positions.

Yet when some terrific force within the earth

Flexes its muscles and gushes forth

As a volcano--

When a tidal wave or earthquake

Vents its wrath on parts of the earth's surface,

No discrimination is made

As to the persons on whom its fury falls.

The Best Road

So straight and smooth and white and hot

The concrete pavement lies;

To me it grows monotonous--

Its sameness hurts my eyes.

Give me a winding mountain road

With graceful arcs and loops;

That turns and twists and soars aloft,

Then swiftly downward swoops.

The quiet, shady country lane

Holds like appeal for me.

When nerves are taut, I year to stop

Beneath some friendly tree.

But when some bourne I strive to reach,

To meet some urgent need,

The kind of road that suits me best

Is the one that's built for speed.

Dr. A.O. Goldsmith of Kennett is a retired director of the School of Journalism, Louisiana State University.