  William Hervey Woods, poet, was born near Greensburg, Kentucky, November 17, 1852, the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Hampden-Sidney College, in Virginia, after which he studied for the church at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Woods was ordained to the ministry of the Southern Presbyterian church in 1878; and since 1887 he has been pastor of the Franklin Square church at Baltimore. For the past several years he has contributed poems to Scribner's, Harper's, The Century, The Atlantic Monthly, The Youth's Companion, The Independent, and several other periodicals. This verse was collected and published in a pleasing little volume of some hundred and fifty pages under the title of The Anteroom and Other Poems (Baltimore,
SYCAMORES [From The Anteroom and Other Poems (Baltimore, 1911)] They love no crowded forest dark, They climb no mountains high, But ranged along the pleasant vale Where shining waters lie, Their brown coats curling open show A silvery undergleam, Like the white limbs of laughing boys Half ready for the stream. What if they yield no harvests sweet, Nor massive timbers sound, And all their summer leafage casts But scanty shade around; Their slender boughs with zephyrs dance, Their young leaves laugh in tune, And there's no lad in all the land Knows better when 'tis June. They come from groves of Arcady, Or some lost Land of Mirth, That Work-a-day and Gain and Greed May not possess the earth, Nor fruitful duties pay, They also serve, mayhap, who help The world keep holiday. |
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