Category: Philosophy

Amid the sounds of revelry
And quite gay as the devil, we
Will welcome in the New Year in our fashion;
We shall sip a bit of wine,
And we’ll mangle Auld Lang Syne
With enthusiasm, fervor, and with passion.

Or an ancient Yankee custom,
We will make, so we can bust ’em,
What some joker has termed New Year Resolutions.
So we’re asked, one will perceive,
Thus naively to believe
Our problems have their choice of twop solutions:

(A) You lie, and so resolve them-
Or (B) guzzle and dissolve them….

by Ray Romine Saturday, December 30, 1950

Let’s live the life that other folk
Have chosen for us. Wear the yolk;
But plodding, never quite despair–
Another life’s to come, and there,
Released from every moneyed care,
We’ll do those things which through this life
But dimly pierce the clouded strife.

Unless this sort of Heaven waits for me,
I shall in Hell among the Angels be.

by Ray Romine Wednesday, December 27, 1944

Let’s live the life thet other folk
Have chosen for us. Wear the yolk;
But plodding, never quite despair–
Another life’s to come, and there,
Released from every moneyed care,
We’ll do those things which through this life
But dimly pierce the clouded strife.

Unless this sort of Heaven waits for me,
I shall in Hell among the Angels be.

by Ray Romine Tuesday, December 26, 1944

1.
So you have fought for a round or two:
You’re tired, and you feel half-dead;
If giving up’s what you want to do,
Then don’t–for there’s more ahead.

Although you’re low, Just what is par?
You’re only down if you think you are.

2 .
You believe you’re lacking in this or that–
I ask you: What if you are?
There’s some one thing underneath your hat
That, developed, will take you far.

You may not be a phenomenal whizz,
But he’s only beaten who thinks he is.

3.
These knocks we face are to measure man;
They’re with us incessantly;
I’m here to do just the best I can
With what has been given me,

So pour it on, World, and I ‘ll receive it–
I’m only whipped if I believe it!

by Ray Romine Tuesday, July 24, 1945

Love can be found among the strife,
But there is little in it;
Compared with all the length of life,
It lasts about a minute.

The other dreary seven-eighths
Of anybody’s span
Is lived immersed in all the hates
That set apart the Man.

It is his brain, and not his soul
That puts him on a shelf
A bit above a Simian role–
His “love” is for- -himself.

by Ray Romine Sunday, September 2, 1945

That day is lost which brings no thrill
Beyond the drag of farm or mill,
That sees no flash, with ready eye,
Of wind-free visions fleeting by,
Monotony’ s brown husk to kill.

Whose soul jumps only at the spill
Of rival’s blood, or at the chill
Bright clink of coins, will come
“That day is lost.”

But he who, tingling, drinks his fill
Of blazoned skies, who has the will
To fight to hold his ideals high
Out of this muck, will never cry:
(However steep his rock-strewn hill)
“That day is lost.”

by Ray Romine Sunday, October 28, 1945