Literature, of Varying Qualities

While unpacking my books I came across a little journal I had owned in my mid-teens, and which I had filled, nearly cover to cover, with hand-copied poems. The archaeological record suggests my printing has somewhat deteriorated, but my taste, even in those distant days, was superb, as this example shows:

'Twas a summer's day in winter
And the snow was raining fast
When a barefoot boy with boots on
Stood sitting in the grass.

Much to my amazement I found that I had also copied Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Mountain Whipoorwill," a much longer and very musical poem about a fiddler from the backwoods of Georgia.