An Appeal for Mint

The Bentztown Bard he daily sings in his poetic print

About the dreamy lusciousness of something known as “mint”;

And Stanton way down Georgia way, he poetizes too,

About the wondrous beverage so like the heavenly dew.

We northerners don’t know what mint is like – this is no bluff –

And we have waited long in hopes they’d send us up some stuff;

The only thing we know up here is just plain peppermint,

Which is not nice, and so we hope these bards will take the hint.

c. Oct. 13, ‘09

Frank Lebby Stanton—born 1857 February 22 in Charleston, South Carolina, died 1927 January 7 in Atlanta, Georgia, and frequently credited as Frank L. Stanton, Frank Stanton or F. L. Stanton—was an American lyricist.

He was also the initial columnist for the Atlanta Constitution and became the first poet laureate of the State of Georgia, a post to which he was appointed by Governor Clifford Walker in 1925 and which Stanton held until his death.

Stanton has been frequently compared with Indiana's James Whitcomb Riley or called "the James Whitcomb Riley of the South"; Stanton and Riley were close friends who frequently traded poetic ideas. Although Stanton frequently wrote in the dialect of black southerners and poor whites, he was an opponent of the less-admirable aspects (such as lynching) of the culture in which he lived, and he tended to be compatible in philosophy with the southern progressivism of his employer, the Atlanta Constitution, for which he wrote editorials. He collaborated with African American composer Harry Thacker Burleigh in the sheet music for Stanton's poem "Jean" (Burleigh composed and harmonized the tune). These and other characteristics of Stanton are well elaborated in the scholarly essays on him by Francis J. Bosha and Bruce M. Swain. 

http://www.poemhunter.com/frank-lebby-stanton/biography/