Love and Laughter
In his 1895 book, Jewels of Memory, in a chapter on poet-journalist George D. Prentis, John A. Joyce tells how in the midst of a wine fueled afternoon in the wine room of the Gault House, in Louisville, he came to write “Love and Laughter.”
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Prentice then began his badinage and spurred me about presuming to think that I was a poet, and finally defied me to write something offhand and prove to his friends that I was not a pretender. I said, “All right; what shall I write about?” “Oh,” said Prentice, “write about anything write about us, wine, feasting fun, or philosophy.” I asked for paper, and it was furnished. I then turned around to a side table, pulled my memories together, thought of Horace, the Falernian wine poet, and one of his odes, where he speaks of people joining you when you laugh, but declining to cling to you when you weep. Then, too, the suggestions of Prentice and the surrounding scene and anchored in my mind and inspired my lines.
I immediately pulled a pencil from my pocket and wrote the following verses inside of fifteen minutes, while my companions were dumping down wine with hilarious vociferation:
Laugh, and the world laughs with you,
Weep and you weep alone;
This grand old earth must borrow its mirth,
It has troubles enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all;
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall;
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and a lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by;
Succeed and give, 'twill help you live,
But no one can help you die.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not want your woe!
I threw these lines to Prentice. He read them to the revelers, and then exclaimed: “Si.,” speaking to {Major Silas1} Miller, “didn't I tell you that fellow was a fool? Now I know he's crazy!”
Well, the world has had the benefit of my brain baby for thirty years, although “Exchange,” “Anonymous,” and other literary robbers have claimed it. What care I? Mankind can make the most of it. More than a dozen other of my verses have gone the rounds of the press under the colors of some plagiarist.
The glorious Prentice has slept beneath the sod for nearly a quarter of a century, but the grand thoughts that he uttered in life will spread over the years like perfume from an unseen censer and thrill the heart of mankind when the memory of his social and literary critics are washed into the waters of oblivion.
1. Silas Miller was the proprietor of the wine room.
George D. Prentis, Jewels of Memory, by John A. Joyce, 1895.