Help with posting blog excerpts on a non-WP page

Okay, first off thank you for any help you can provide.

Situation: I have a site that has both “static” and a wordpress install. The wordpress install is https://www.site.com/blog

What I am attempting to do is create a page that will actually be a widget that displays my latest 5 posts excerpts. I have searched the forum here and have found a number of suggested solutions. The only problem for me is that none of them seem to be working.

I think that this is my closest attempt at it:

<?php
//required include files
require('wp-blog-header.php');
require_once("wp-config.php");
require_once("wp-includes/wp-db.php");
?>

<?php

$args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 5, 'order' => 'asc' );
$postslists = get_posts( $args );
foreach  ( (array)  $postslist as $post ) :
	setup_postdata( $post ); ?>
    	<div>
        	<?php the_date(); ?>
        	<br />
        	<?php the_title(); ?>
        	<?php the_exercpt(); ?>
        </div>
<?php
endforeach;
wp_reset_postdata();
?>

This file is in the ../blog folder. The only problem is that it returns a blank screen.

My other attempt at this is (again in the /blog folder):

<?php
/* Short and sweet */
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require('wp-blog-header.php');
?>

<?php
global $post;
$args = array( 'posts_per_page' => 3 );
$myposts = get_posts( $args );
foreach( $myposts as $post )?:	setup_postdata($post);??>
<a href="<?php the_permalink()??>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to
<?php the_title_attribute();??>">
<?php the_title();??></a><br />
<?php endforeach;??>

Which provides me with an error : Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘:’

Anyone have any advice, suggestions, comments, or condescending scorned looks?

Thanks in advance.