Songs Without Words

<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN> <h2>SONGS WITHOUT WORDS</h2> <h3>BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">I can not sing the old songs,<br/></span> <span class="i2">Though well I know the tune,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Familiar as a cradle song<br/></span> <span class="i2">With sleep-compelling croon;<br/></span> <span class="i0">Yet though I'm filled with music<br/></span> <span class="i2">As choirs of summer birds,<br/></span> <span class="i0">"I can not sing the old songs"&mdash;<br/></span> <span class="i2">I do not know the words.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">I start on "Hail Columbia,"<br/></span> <span class="i2">And get to "heav'n-born band,"<br/></span> <span class="i0">And there I strike an up-grade<br/></span> <span class="i2">With neither steam nor sand;<br/></span> <span class="i0">"Star Spangled Banner" downs me<br/></span> <span class="i2">Right in my wildest screaming,<br/></span> <span class="i0">I start all right, but dumbly come<br/></span> <span class="i2">To voiceless wreck at "streaming."<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">So, when I sing the old songs,<br/></span> <span class="i2">Don't murmur or complain<br/></span> <span class="i0">If "Ti, diddy ah da, tum dum,"<br/></span> <span class="i2">Should fill the sweetest strain.<br/></span> <span class="i0">I love "Tolly um dum di do,"<br/></span> <span class="i2">And the "trilla-la yeep da"-birds,<br/></span> <span class="i0">But "I can not sing the old songs"&mdash;<br/></span> <span class="i2">I do not know the words.<br/></span> </div> </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />