Cheery Way, a Bit of Verse for Every Day - August

In an age of hurried scrolling and endless distraction, John Kendrick Bangs offers something radical: a pause. One poem for each day of August, written in 1920, when people still believed a bit of verse could make a day more bearable. Bangs was America's patron saint of light humor, a man who wrote witty verse the way a friend tells a good story, with warmth, a twinkle, and perfect timing. These poems mark the late summer, the long afternoons, the first hints of autumn creeping into the morning air. They observe small things: a lazy afternoon, a summer storm, the particular quality of August light. There's nothing weighty here, and that's precisely the point. This is poetry as companion, not conquest. Read one a day, or gulp them all in a single sitting. Either way, you'll find yourself smiling at a man who understood that the smallest pleasures are often the most worth keeping.