POPLAR .GROVE
August, 1937
Vacation days, wherever spent,
Are commonly graced with glad events,
But the days I spent at Deltaville
Have charmed my heart with wondrous thrills
Because of the folks we came to know
As gracious hosts at Poplar Grove.
Embosomed by trees with verdant leaves
Which glint with glee in the amorous breeze
The friendly house is reposed in the shade
Where land and sea lock limbs in embrace
Like lovers entwining enraptured bodies
To yield to each other their beauty and bounty.
The Aphrodite soil, just born of the sea,
Is white and warm and rich indeed
With nurture for life in field and forest
Which wreath the house with garlands of harvest;
And lanes run out like silver-bands
To sheltering bay and ocean strands.
Where Broad Creek; opens its languorous lips
To meet
The folks of the Grove and their nearest neighbors
May serve their pleasures, as well as their labors
By leisurely sculling the lush lagoon
Or boating the sea by sun or moon.
As the land is rich with luscious fruit
The sea is teaming with toothsome food,
With clams, crustacean, oyster and fish,
Delighting the palate when served on a dish,
And jellyfish too, to delight the mind
Which cons evolution from virus to man
Have mated their beauties and bounties here
And bred a most marvelous human kind,
The wonderful people we did find
When Captain
Did bid us their welcome to Poplar Grove.
So splendid a captain is seldom seen,
As trim as a vessel and buoyant and keen.
The love of life shines bright from his face
Like glitter which crests a white-capped wave.
His soul like a sail which curves to the sky
Is mirroring sunlight from dancing eyes.
Like a myrtle-blossom which blooms at the gate
Is the captain’s wife - the finest mate
A man can desire and call his own,
A living haven, the genius of home,
A radiance serene of poise and peace,
So loving and kind and gentle and sweet.
*
From so noble a pair a daughter has sprung,
Good Genevieve, the queen of the land,
A maiden combining in body and spirit
And bringing to life its sea and its soil
To behold themselves through her soulful eyes.
And there were others, like little Eileen
With busy hands and dancing feet,
And Don The Dog who would swim and hunt,
And Snowball The Cat, too staid to run,
And ducks resounding with quack, quack, quack,
And down in the pen the fattening hog.
These are the folks at Poplar Grove,
The kind of folks I love the most,
True children of earth and fond of joy
With minds held free and hearts held high,
Not slaves of gold, but lovers of life,
With whom I abode as in paradise.