“What do you make of it all?” she said. 
I answered:  “The dead are a long time dead,
And care is bitter and duty stern,
And each must weep when it comes his turn. 
And all grow weary and long for play,
So here is laughter to end the day. 
Foolish?  Oh, yes, it is that,” said I,
“But better the laugh than the dreary sigh.

“Now look at us here, for we’re like them, too,
And many the foolish things we do. 
We often grow silly and seek a smile
In a thousand ways that are not worth while;
Yet after the mirth and the jest are through,
We shall all be judged by the deeds we do,
And God shall forget on the Judgment Day
The fools we were in our hours of play.”

What Makes an Artist

We got to talking art one day, discussing in a general way
How some can match with brush and paint the glory of a tree,
And some in stone can catch the things of which the dreamy poet sings,
While others seem to have no way to tell the joys they see.

Old Blake had sat in silence there and let each one of us declare
Our notions of what’s known as art, until he’d heard us through;
And then said he:  “It seems to me that any man, whoe’er he be,
Becomes an artist by the good he daily tries to do.

“He need not write the books men read to be an artist.  No, indeed! 
He need not work with paint and brush to show his love of art;
Who does a kindly deed to-day and helps another on his way,
Has painted beauty on a face and played the poet’s part.

“Though some of us cannot express our inmost thoughts of loveliness,
We prove we love the beautiful by how we act and live;
The poet singing of a tree no greater poet is than he
Who finds it in his heart some care unto a tree to give.

“Though he who works in marble stone the name of artist here may own,
No less an artist is the man who guards his children well;
’Tis art to love the fine and true; by what we are and what we do
How much we love life’s nobler things to all the world we tell.”

She Powders Her Nose

A woman is queer, there’s no doubt about that. 
She hates to be thin and she hates to be fat;
One minute it’s laughter, the next it’s a cry—­
You can’t understand her, however you try;
But there’s one thing about her which everyone knows—­
A woman’s not dressed till she powders her nose.

You never can tell what a woman will say;
She’s a law to herself every hour of the day. 
It keeps a man guessing to know what to do,
And mostly he’s wrong when his guessing is through;
But this you can bet on, wherever she goes
She’ll find some occasion to powder her nose.

I’ve studied the sex for a number of years;
I’ve watched her in laughter and seen her in tears;
On her ways and her whims I have pondered a lot,
To find what will please her and just what will not;
But all that I’ve learned from the start to the close
Is that sooner or later she’ll powder her nose.