My First Poem Poem by Della Hodgson James

I have no talent for anything
What-ever my ambition.
Yet, I have wished so many times,
That I had an education.
But goodness me, I sit and wish,
For things that might have been.
Had many things been differently
Fate might have been more kind.

Our school room then was incomplete,
And school term far more shorter.
Equipment was as meager, too,
And the roads were rough and stony.

We had no modern conveniences.
We sit on the crudest benches,
No desk, or chair was in the room;
No library, globe or atlas.

We had some grand, good teachers though,
Fields, Kastning, and Edward Norton.
Marion Taylor, and Miss. Frances Carrol.
Printess Bushong, and Dan Walker.

But my eyesight played a trick on me.
Yet I kept right on attending.
I could not make the least progress,
Or knew not why the reason.

Until the pain was so severe
The light was almost blinding.
I became less competent each day,
But my teachers were all lenient.

Then next, in a darkened room I sat,
For months, during daylight hours.
I wept hot tears of bitterness;
My nights no less a torture.

But blessed day, good tidings came
And I was sent away direct;
To Dr. Shuttee, a great, good man
Who brought my eye sight back.

I'd like to tell to all the world,
The goodness he has wrought.
For blind and suffering humanity,
And not just for this insignificant one.

I'd like to write, and write, and write.
But words and phrases fail me;
My vocabulary is incomplete,
But I am thankful, just the same.

If I could have the tihngs I wish,
I know well what the first would be;
I'd like to be a learned scholar
Like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Alas! I never hope to be,
A famous celebrity of renoun.
My education is not the best,
But I'm thankful, I'm not blind.