John D. Sherwood

“Robin Hood. To a Friend.No! those days are gone away,And their hours are old and gray,And their minutes buried allUnder the down-trodden pallOfthe leaves of many years:Many times have winter's shears,Frozen North, and chilling East,Sounded tempests to the feastOf the forest's whispering fleeces,Since men knew nor rent nor leases. No, the bugle sounds no more,And the twanging bow no more;Silent is the ivory shrillPast the heath and up the hill;There is no mid-forest laugh,Where lone Echo gives the halfTo some wight, amaz'd to hearJesting, deep in forest drear. On the fairest time of JuneYou may go, with sun or moon,Or the seven stars to light you,Or the polar ray to right you;But you never may beholdLittle John, or Robin bold;Never one, of all the clan,Thrumming on an empty canSome old hunting ditty, whileHe doth his green way beguileTo fair hostess Merriment,Down beside the pasture Trent;For he left the merry tale,Messenger for spicy ale. Gone, the merry morris din;Gone, the song of Gamelyn;Gone, the tough-belted outlawIdling in the "grene shawe";All are gone away and past!And if Robin should be castSudden from his turfed grave,And if Marian should haveOnce again her forest days,She would weep, and he would craze:He would swear, for all his oaks,Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,Have rotted on the briny seas;She would weep that her wild beesSang not to her---strange! that honeyCan't be got without hard money! So it is; yet let us singHonour to the old bow-string!Honour to the bugle-horn!Honour to the woods unshorn!Honour to the Lincoln green!Honour to the archer keen!Honour to tight little John,And the horse he rode upon!Honour to bold Robin Hood,Sleeping in the underwood!Honour to maid Marian,And to all the Sherwood clan!Though their days have hurried byLet us two a burden try.””

“Joyce Jordan progressed slowly from Girl Interne to M.D., the change becoming complete around 1942. But the theme of a woman’s difficulty in a man’s world remained. In the earliest days it was a progression of suitors. Then Joyce faced the “necessity of choosing between a brilliant career as a physician or becoming the wife of a wealthy man,” hospital trustee Neil Reynolds. At last, married to foreign correspondent Paul Sherwood, Joyce found happiness threatened by Paul’s bitter and neurotic sister, Margot. Eventually Paul was written out of the script, and Joyce practiced medicine in the little town of Preston, becoming a surgeon at Hotchkiss Memorial Hospital.””

“I went to the library and found again the books that had changed my life: Sherwood Anderson, Jack London, Knut Hamsun, Dostoevsky, D’Annunzio, Pirandello, Flaubert, de Maupassant. The welcome they gave me was much warmer than the cold curiosity of old friends I met in the town.””