I LIKE to read a stirring tale of peril and of action.
I follow every character with heartfelt satisfaction.
If, truth and error, right and wrong, defeat and triumph blending,
The story rambles steadily toward a happy ending.
No matter what vicissitudes the hero strong engages,
No matter how the conflict runs across the crowded pages,
If at the close all comes out right, with every wrong defeated,
Each happy dream at last come true, each worthy task completed.
They tell me it is not the style in these days so to write it.
The proper thing, they say, is with a smirch of wrong to blight it,
To leave the tears unwiped, the wrong unrighted, and the error
Unbanished in the general reign of trouble and of terror.
But I still have the faith to cling to childhood’s deep conviction
That somehow justice does get done in life as well as fiction,
That there is more of right than wrong, of pleasure than of weeping,
And that a kindly Providence still has us in its keeping.
I think when all the years are through the world’s heart will be singing,
That bells of bounding happiness will everywhere be ringing,
And the great Author of the tale of life, His mercy lending,
Will bring the story of the world down to a happy ending.
[Illustration of an armored knight riding a galloping horse and holding
a woman seated in front of him. The knight’s right hand holds a long
staff tipped with a small flag, while his left hand secures the woman.
His cape flaps in the wind. The horse is dressed with coverings from
head to hind quarters. They are centered in the frame with a billowing
cloud rising behind them. The lower-right part of the frame has nearby
vegetation. The upper-left part has a castle on a hill a small distance
away. The artwork has a printed signature, but the stylized last letter
of the last name is uncertain; an “R” would complete the name “Stanley
Hunter.”]