The trip my sister and I recently took  to  our ancestral home in Mississippi revealed some delightful historical facts — and perhaps the most surprising is that  Great-Great Granddaddy Jesse Franklin Hembree was quite a poet.  Jess was the great-granddad of my mother, Marguerite — he died when she was two years old, so she wouldn’t have remembered anything about him.  Her granddad, Horace Greely Hembree, was Jesse’s oldest son.  They all rest now, on heaven’s side, with headstones in the Hembree Family Cemetery, right behind the house where my mother spent many summers growing up.

I’ve only seen three of his verses so far, but my 3rd cousin tells me there are more, and she will send copies to me. Friday, April 17, 2020, my niece, an archivist by profession, unearthed this one with an internet search. I had missed it when I searched last week. In doing research and genealogy, four eyes are better than two! This was published in the Neshoba Democrat on July 8, 1920, on the front page, and beneath the poem, the editor had written this:

(The above lines were written by Uncle Jess Hembree.  It is a rare thing to find in a man of over 80 winters the music and sentiment of a boy of eighteen summers.  And to pitch from the sublime to the ridiculous, to spin out beautiful phrases; to mix truth with (whimsy? illegible) as he has so well done, is rare in anyone.)

THE KIDLESS SOLDIER

No beauty’s form could captivate his eye;

No dulcet voice could tame his sluggish ear

No maiden’s blush could win from him a sigh,

No woman’s woe could take from him a tear.

No love born smile e’er on his gloomy face

No soft white hand e’er smoothed his ruffled brow

Unknown to him the lover’s glorious craze

That leads him up to take the fatal vow.

No little form e’er climbed upon his knee;

No little feet e’er shuffled on his floor;

No woman’s kiss as sweet as sweet can be

Is his forevermore.

No childish voice e’er lisped a father’s name

As day by day, the years have rolled along

To teach him that the lover’s early dream

Is parent to the tender nursery song.

And since his Uncle Sam has called him off to France

Because he has no kid;

He feels that he has missed a glorious chance

And grieves because he did.

But when a man has made a family flat

His grieving comes too late

No Vardaman, nor Bilbo, no Venable nor Pat

Can save him from his fate.

And now he is gone, Alas! Across the stormy days,

By Uncle Sam’s decree.

While fallen heroes rest in glory’s sleep

Beyond the sea;

Should he meet some hostile tooting band

In trench or open field

No maiden’s love, the genie’s magic wand

Will be his shield.

And should he fall at Verdun or Reims

Or Chateau Thierries,

No forlorn maid will meet him in her dreams

This side the stormy sea.

And when he dies, as everybody must

No rose will bloom upon his lonely grave

His poor uncopied form will sink into the dust

His name in Lethe’s wave.