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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Something Else Again, by Franklin P. Adams
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Something Else Again
+
+Author: Franklin P. Adams
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2008 [EBook #26797]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SOMETHING
+ELSE AGAIN
+
+_By_
+
+FRANKLIN P. ADAMS
+
+_Author of_
+"_By and Large_," "_In Other Words_,"
+"_Tobogganing on Parnassus_,"
+"_Weights and Measures_,"
+_Etc._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+GARDEN CITY   NEW YORK   LONDON
+1920
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920.
+
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
+TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
+INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
+
+
+
+
+To MONTAGUE GLASS
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+
+The author wishes to thank the _New York Tribune_,
+_Life_, _Harper's Magazine_, _Collier's Weekly_, and _The Home
+Sector_, for their kind permission to include in this
+volume material which has appeared in their pages.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+Present Imperative                                                   3
+
+The Doughboy's Horace                                                5
+
+From: Horace To: Phyllis                                             7
+
+Advising Chloe                                                       8
+
+To an Aged Cut-up I                                                  9
+
+                  II                                                10
+
+His Monument                                                        11
+
+Glycera Rediviva!                                                   12
+
+On a Wine of Horace's                                               13
+
+"What Flavour?"                                                     14
+
+The Stalling of Q. H. F.                                            15
+
+On the Flight of Time                                               16
+
+The Last Laugh                                                      17
+
+Again Endorsing the Lady I                                          19
+
+                         II                                         20
+
+Propertius's Bid for Immortality                                    21
+
+A Lament                                                            23
+
+Bon Voyage--and Vice Versa                                          24
+
+Fragment                                                            25
+
+On the Uses of Adversity                                            26
+
+After Hearing "Robin Hood"                                          27
+
+Maud Muller Mutatur                                                 28
+
+The Carlyles                                                        31
+
+If Amy Lowell Had Been James Whitcomb Riley                         35
+
+If the Advertising Man Had Been Gilbert                             37
+
+If the Advertising Man Had Been Praed, or Locker                    39
+
+Georgie Porgie                                                      40
+
+On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders                        41
+
+To a Vers Librist                                                   43
+
+How Do You Tackle Your Work?                                        45
+
+Recuerdo                                                            48
+
+On Tradition                                                        51
+
+Unshackled Thoughts on Chivalry, Romance, Adventure, Etc.           52
+
+Results Ridiculous                                                  53
+
+Regarding (1) the U. S. and (2) New York                            54
+
+Broadmindedness                                                     55
+
+The Jazzy Bard                                                      56
+
+Lines on and from "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations"                  57
+
+Thoughts in a Far Country                                           58
+
+When You Meet a Man from Your Own Home Town                         59
+
+The Shepherd's Resolution                                           61
+
+"It Was a Famous Victory"                                           62
+
+On Profiteering                                                     63
+
+Despite                                                             64
+
+The Return of the Soldier                                           65
+
+"I Remember, I Remember"                                            66
+
+The Higher Education                                                68
+
+War and Peace                                                       69
+
+Fifty-Fifty                                                         70
+
+"So Shines a Good Deed in a Naughty World"                          71
+
+Vain Words                                                          72
+
+On the Importance of Being Earnest                                  73
+
+It Happens in the B. R. Families                                    74
+
+Abelard and Heloise                                                 77
+
+Lines Written on the Sunny Side of Frankfort Street                 79
+
+Fifty-Fifty                                                         80
+
+To Myrtilla                                                         81
+
+A Psalm of Labouring Life                                           82
+
+Ballade of Ancient Acts                                             84
+
+To a Prospective Cook                                               85
+
+Variation on a Theme                                                86
+
+"Such Stuff as Dreams"                                              88
+
+The Ballad of Justifiable Homicide                                  89
+
+The Ballad of the Murdered Merchant                                 90
+
+A Gotham Garden of Verses                                           92
+
+Lines on Reading Frank J. Wilstach's "A Dictionary of Similes"      94
+
+The Dictaphone Bard                                                 95
+
+The Comfort of Obscurity                                            97
+
+Ballade of the Traffickers                                          98
+
+To W. Hohenzollern, on Discontinuing The Conning Tower             100
+
+To W. Hohenzollern, on Resuming The Conning Tower                  103
+
+Thoughts on the Cosmos                                             105
+
+On Environment                                                     106
+
+The Ballad of the Thoughtless Waiter                               107
+
+Rus Vs. Urbs                                                       109
+
+"I'm Out of the Army Now"                                          110
+
+"Oh Man!"                                                          112
+
+An Ode in Time of Inauguration                                     113
+
+What the Copy Desk Might Have Done                                 124
+
+Song of Synthetic Virility                                         133
+
+
+
+
+SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN
+
+
+
+
+Present Imperative
+
+Horace: Book I, Ode 11
+
+_"Tu ne quaesieris--scire nefas--quem mihi; quem tibi----"_
+
+AD LEUCONOEN
+
+
+Nay, query not, Leuconoe, the finish of the fable;
+Eliminate the worry as to what the years may hoard!
+You only waste your time upon the Babylonian Table--
+(Slang for the Ouija board).
+
+And as to whether Jupiter, the final, unsurpassed one,
+May add a lot of winters to our portion here below,
+Or this impinging season is to be our very last one--
+Really, I'd hate to know.
+
+Apply yourself to wisdom! Sweep the floor and wash the dishes,
+Nor dream about the things you'll do in 1928!
+My counsel is to cease to sit and yearn about your wishes,
+Cursing the throws of Fate.
+
+My! how I have been chattering on matters sad and pleasant!
+(Endure with me a moment while I polish off a rhyme).
+If I were you, I think, I'd bother only with the present--
+Now is the only time.
+
+
+
+
+The Doughboy's Horace
+
+Horace: Book III, Ode 9
+
+"Donec eram gratus tibi----"
+
+HORACE, PVT. ----TH INFANTRY, A. E. F., WRITES:
+
+
+While I was fussing you at home
+You put the notion in my dome
+That I was the Molasses Kid.
+I batted strong. I'll say I did.
+
+
+LYDIA, ANYBURG, U. S. A., WRITES:
+
+While you were fussing me alone
+To other boys my heart was stone.
+When I was all that you could see
+No girl had anything on me.
+
+
+HORACE:
+
+Well, say, I'm having some romance
+With one Babette, of Northern France.
+If that girl gave me the command
+I'd dance a jig in No Man's Land.
+
+
+LYDIA:
+
+I, too, have got a young affair
+With Charley--say, that boy is _there_!
+I'd just as soon go out and die
+If I thought it'd please that guy.
+
+
+HORACE:
+
+Suppose I can this foreign wren
+And start things up with you again?
+Suppose I promise to be good?
+I'd love you, Lyd. I'll say I would.
+
+
+LYDIA:
+
+Though Charley's good and handsome--_oh_, boy!
+And you're a stormy, fickle doughboy,
+Go give the Hun his final whack,
+And I'll marry you when you come back.
+
+
+
+
+From: Horace
+To: Phyllis
+Subject: Invitation
+
+Book IV, Ode 11
+
+"_Est mihi nonum superantis annum----_"
+
+
+Phyllis, I've a jar of wine,
+(Alban, B. C. 49),
+Parsley wreaths, and, for your tresses,
+Ivy that your beauty blesses.
+
+Shines my house with silverware;
+Frondage decks the altar stair--
+Sacred vervain, a device
+For a lambkin's sacrifice.
+
+Up and down the household stairs
+What a festival prepares!
+Everybody's superintending--
+See the sooty smoke ascending!
+
+What, you ask me, is the date
+Of the day we celebrate?
+13th April, month of Venus--
+Birthday of my boss, Maecenas.
+
+Let me, Phyllis, say a word
+Touching Telephus, a bird
+Ranking far too high above you;
+(And the loafer doesn't love you).
+
+Lessons, Phyllie, may be learned
+From Phaeton--how he was burned!
+And recall Bellerophon was
+One equestrian who thrown was.
+
+Phyllis, of my loves the last,
+My philandering days are past.
+Sing you, in your clear contralto,
+Songs I write for the rialto.
+
+
+
+
+Advising Chloe
+
+Horace: Book I, Ode 23
+
+_"Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloe----"_
+
+
+Why shun me, my Chloe? Nor pistol nor bowie
+  Is mine with intention to kill.
+And yet like a llama you run to your mamma;
+  You tremble as though you were ill.
+
+No lion to rend you, no tiger to end you,
+  I'm tame as a bird in a cage.
+That counsel maternal can run for _The Journal_--
+  You get me, I guess.... You're of age.
+
+
+
+
+To An Aged Cut-up
+
+Horace: Book III, Ode 15
+
+
+I
+
+"_Uxor pauperis Ibyci,
+    Tandem nequitiae fige modum tuae----_"
+
+IN CHLORIN
+
+Dear Mrs. Ibycus, accept a little sound advice,
+  Your manners and your speech are over-bold;
+To chase around the sporty way you do is far from nice;
+  Believe me, darling, you are growing old.
+
+Now Pholoe may fool around (she dances like a doe!)
+  A debutante has got to think of men;
+But you were twenty-seven over thirty years ago--
+  You ought to be asleep at half-past ten.
+
+O Chloris, cut the ragging and the roses and the rum--
+  Delete the drink, or better, chop the booze!
+Go buy a skein of yarn and make the knitting needles hum,
+  And imitate the art of Sister Suse.
+
+
+II
+
+Chloris, lay off the flapper stuff;
+What's fit for Pholoe, a fluff,
+Is not for Ibycus's wife--
+A woman at your time of life!
+
+Ignore, old dame, such pleasures as
+The shimmy and "the Bacchus Jazz";
+Your presence with the maidens jars--
+You are the cloud that dims the stars.
+
+Your daughter Pholoe may stay
+Out nights upon the Appian Way;
+Her love for Nothus, as you know,
+Makes her as playful as a doe.
+
+No jazz for you, no jars of wine,
+No rose that blooms incarnadine.
+For one thing only are you fit:
+Buy some Lucerian wool--and knit!
+
+
+
+
+His Monument
+
+Horace: Book III, Ode 30
+
+"_Exegi monumentum aere perennius----_"
+
+
+The monument that I have built is durable as brass,
+And loftier than the Pyramids which mock the years that pass.
+Nor blizzard can destroy it, nor furious rain corrode--
+Remember, I'm the bard that built the first Horatian ode.
+
+I shall not altogether die; a part of me's immortal.
+A part of me shall never pass the mortuary portal;
+And when I die my fame shall stand the nitric test of time--
+The fame of me of lowly birth, who built the lofty rhyme!
+
+Ay, fame shall be my portion when no trace there is of me,
+For I first made AEolian songs the songs of Italy.
+Accept I pray, Melpomene, my modest meed of praise,
+And crown my thinning, graying locks with wreaths of Delphic bays!
+
+
+
+
+Glycera Rediviva!
+
+Horace: Book I, Ode 19
+
+"_Mater saeva Cupidinum_"
+
+
+Venus, the cruel mother of
+The Cupids (symbolising Love),
+Bids me to muse upon and sigh
+For things to which I've said "Good-bye!"
+
+Believe me or believe me not,
+I give this Glycera girl a lot:
+Pure Parian marble are her arms--
+And she has eighty other charms.
+
+Venus has left her Cyprus home
+And will not let me pull a pome
+About the Parthians, fierce and rough,
+The Scythian war, and all that stuff.
+
+Set up, O slaves, a verdant shrine!
+Uncork a quart of last year's wine!
+Place incense here, and here verbenas,
+And watch me while I jolly Venus!
+
+
+
+
+On a Wine of Horace's
+
+
+What time I read your mighty line,
+  O Mr. Q. Horatius Flaccus,
+In praise of many an ancient wine--
+  You twanged a wicked lyre to Bacchus!--
+I wondered, like a Yankee hick,
+If that old stuff contained a kick.
+
+So when upon a Paris card
+  I glimpsed Falernian, I said: "Waiter,
+I'll emulate that ancient bard,
+  And pass upon his merits later."
+Professor Mendell, _quelque_ sport,
+Suggested that we split a quart.
+
+O Flaccus, ere I ceased to drink
+  Three glasses and a pair of highballs,
+I could not talk; I could not think;
+  For I was pickled to the eyeballs.
+If you sopped up Falernian wine
+How did you ever write a line?
+
+
+
+
+"What Flavour?"
+
+Horace: Book III, Ode 13
+
+_"O fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro----"_
+
+
+Worthy of flowers and syrups sweet,
+  O fountain of Bandusian onyx,
+To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat
+  Mix with the sizz of thy carbonics.
+
+A kid whose budding horns portend
+  A life of love and war--but vainly!
+For thee his sanguine life shall end--
+  He'll spill his blood, to put it plainly.
+
+And never shalt thou feel the heat
+  That blazes in the days of Sirius,
+But men shall quaff thy soda sweet,
+  And girls imbibe thy drinks delirious.
+
+Fountain whose dulcet cool I sing,
+  Be thou immortal by this Ode (a
+Not wholly meretricious thing),
+  Bandusian fount of ice-cream soda!
+
+
+
+
+The Stalling of Q. H. F.
+
+Horace: Epode 14
+
+_"Mollis inertia cur tantam diffuderit imis"_
+
+
+Maecenas, you fret me, you worry me
+  Demanding I turn out a rhyme;
+Insisting on reasons, you hurry me;
+  You want my iambics on time.
+You say my ambition's diminishing;
+  You ask why my poem's not done.
+The god it is keeps me from finishing
+        The stuff I've begun.
+
+Be not so persistent, so clamorous.
+  Anacreon burned with a flame
+Candescently, crescently amorous.
+  You rascal, you're doing the same!
+Was no fairer the flame that burned Ilium.
+  Cheer up, you're a fortunate scamp,
+... Consider avuncular William
+        And Phryne, the vamp.
+
+
+
+
+On the Flight of Time
+
+Horace: Book I, Ode 2
+
+"_Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi,
+quem tibi_"
+
+AD LEUCONOEN
+
+
+Look not, Leuconoe, into the future;
+  Seek not to find what the Answer may be;
+Let no Chaldean clairvoyant compute your
+  Time of existence.... It irritates me!
+
+Better to bear what may happen soever
+  Patiently, playing it through like a sport,
+Whether the end of your breathing is Never,
+  Or, as is likely, your time will be short.
+
+This is the angle, the true situation;
+  Get me, I pray, for I'm putting you hep:
+While I've been fooling with versification
+  Time has been flying.... Both gates!
+    Watch your step!
+
+
+
+
+The Last Laugh
+
+Horace: Epode 15
+
+_"Nox erat et caelo fulgebat Luna sereno----"_
+
+
+"How sweet the moonlight sleeps," I quoted,
+  "Upon this bank!" that starry night--
+The night you vowed you'd be devoted--
+  I'll tell the world you held me tight.
+
+The night you said until Orion
+  Should cease to whip the wintry sea,
+Until the lamb should love the lion,
+  You would, you swore, be all for me.
+
+Some day, Neaera, you'll be sorry.
+  No mollycoddle swain am I.
+I shall not sit and pine, by gorry!
+  Because you're with some other guy!
+
+No, I shall turn my predilection
+  Upon some truer, fairer Jane;
+And all your prayer and genuflexion
+  For my return shall be in vain.
+
+And as for _you_, who choose to sneer, O,
+  Though deals in lands and stocks you swing,
+Though handsome as a movie hero,
+  Though wise you are--and everything;
+
+Yet, when the loss of her you're mourning,
+  How I shall laugh at all your woe!
+How I'll remind you of this warning,
+  And laugh, "Ha! ha! I told you so!"
+
+
+
+
+Again Endorsing the Lady
+
+Book II, Elegy 2
+
+_"Liber eram et vacuo meditabar vivere
+lecto----"_
+
+
+I
+
+I was free. I thought that I had entered Love's Antarctic Zone.
+"A truce to sentiment," I said. "My nights shall be my own."
+But Love has double-crossed me. How can Beauty be so fair?
+The grace of her, the face of her--and oh, her yellow hair!
+
+And oh, the wondrous walk of her! So doth a goddess glide.
+Jove's sister--ay, or Pallas--hath no statelier a stride.
+Fair as Ischomache herself, the Lapithanian maid;
+Or Brimo when at Mercury's side her virgin form she laid.
+
+Surrender now, ye goddesses whom erst the shepherd spied!
+Upon the heights of Ida lay your vestitures aside!
+And though she reach the countless years of the Cumaean Sibyl,
+May never, never Age at those delightful features nibble!
+
+
+II
+
+I thought that I was wholly free,
+  That I had Love upon the shelf;
+"Hereafter," I declared in glee,
+  "I'll have my evenings to myself."
+How can such mortal beauty live?
+(Ah, Jove, thine errings I forgive!)
+
+Her tresses pale the sunlight's gold;
+  Her hands are featly formed, and taper;
+Her--well, the rest ought not be told
+  In any modest family paper.
+Fair as Ischomache, and bright
+As Brimo. _Quaeque_ queen is right.
+
+O goddesses of long ago,
+  A shepherd called ye sweet and slender.
+He saw ye, so he ought to know;
+  But sooth, to her ye must surrender.
+O may a million years not trace
+A single line upon that face!
+
+
+
+
+Propertius's Bid for Immortality
+
+Book III, Ode 3
+
+_"Carminis interea nostri redaemus in
+orbem----"_
+
+
+Let us return, then, for a time,
+To our accustomed round of rhyme;
+And let my songs' familiar art
+Not fail to move my lady's heart.
+
+They say that Orpheus with his lute
+Had power to tame the wildest brute;
+That "Variations on a Theme"
+Of his would stay the swiftest stream.
+
+They say that by the minstrel's song
+Cithaeron's rocks were moved along
+To Thebes, where, as you may recall,
+They formed themselves to frame a wall.
+
+And Galatea, lovely maid,
+Beneath wild Etna's fastness stayed
+Her horses, dripping with the mere,
+Those Polypheman songs to hear.
+
+What marvel, then, since Bacchus and
+Apollo grasp me by the hand,
+That all the maidens you have heard
+Should hang upon my slightest word?
+
+Taenerian columns in my home
+Are not; nor any golden dome;
+No parks have I, nor Marcian spring,
+Nor orchards--nay, nor anything.
+
+The Muses, though, are friends of mine;
+Some readers love my lyric line;
+And never is Calliope
+Awearied by my poetry.
+
+O happy she whose meed of praise
+Hath fallen upon my sheaf of lays!
+And every song of mine is sent
+To be thy beauty's monument.
+
+The Pyramids that point the sky,
+The House of Jove that soars so high,
+Mausolus' tomb--they are not free
+From Death his final penalty.
+
+For fire or rain shall steal away
+The crumbling glory of their day;
+But fame for wit can never die,
+And gosh! I was a gay old guy!
+
+
+
+
+A Lament
+
+Propertius: Book II, Elegy 8
+
+_"Eripitur nobis iam pridem cara puella----"_
+
+
+While she I loved is being torn
+  From arms that held her many years,
+Dost thou regard me, friend, with scorn,
+  Or seek to check my tears?
+
+Bitter the hatred for a jilt,
+  And hot the hates of Eros are;
+My hatred, slay me an thou wilt,
+  For thee'd be gentler far.
+
+Can I endure that she recline
+  Upon another's arm? Shall they
+No longer call that lady "mine"
+  Who "mine" was yesterday?
+
+For Love is fleeting as the hours.
+  The town of Thebes is draped with moss,
+And Ilium's well-known topless towers
+  Are now a total loss.
+
+Fell Thebes and Troy; and in the grave
+  Have fallen lords of high degree.
+What songs I sang! What gifts I gave!
+  ... _She_ never fell for me.
+
+
+
+
+Bon Voyage--and Vice Versa
+
+Propertius: Elegy VIII, Part 1
+
+_"Tune igitur demens, nec te mea cura
+moratur?"_
+
+
+O Cynthia, hast thou lost thy mind?
+  Have I no claim on thine affection?
+Dost love the chill Illyrian wind
+  With something passing predilection?
+And is thy friend--whoe'er he be--
+The kind to take the place of _me_?
+
+Ah, canst thou bear the surging deep?
+  Canst thou endure the hard ship's-mattress?
+For scant will be thy hours of sleep
+  From Staten Island to Cape Hatt'ras;
+And won't thy fairy feet be froze
+With treading on the foreign snows?
+
+I hope that doubly blows the gale,
+  With billows twice as high as ever,
+So that the captain, fain to sail,
+  May not achieve his mad endeavour!
+The winds, when that they cease to roar,
+Shall find me wailing on the shore.
+
+Yet merit thou my love or wrath,
+  O False, I pray that Galatea
+May smile upon thy watery path!
+  A pleasant trip,--that's the idea.
+Light of my life, there never shall
+For me be any other gal.
+
+And sailors, as they hasten past,
+  Will always have to hear my query:
+"Where have you seen my Cynthia last?
+  Has anybody seen my dearie?"
+I'll shout: "In Malden or Marquette
+Where'er she be, I'll have her yet!"
+
+
+
+
+Fragment
+
+_"Militis in galea nidum fecere columbae."_--PETRONIUS
+
+
+Within the soldier's helmet see
+  The nesting dove;
+Venus and Mars, it seems to me,
+  In love.
+
+
+
+
+On the Uses of Adversity
+
+_"Nam nihil est, quod non mortalibus afferat
+usum."_--PETRONIUS
+
+
+Nothing there is that mortal man may utterly despise;
+What in our wealth we treasured, in our poverty we prize.
+
+The gold upon a sinking ship has often wrecked the boat,
+While on a simple oar a shipwrecked man may keep afloat.
+
+The burglar seeks the plutocrat, attracted by his dress--
+The poor man finds his poverty the true preparedness.
+
+
+
+
+After Hearing "Robin Hood"
+
+
+The songs of Sherwood Forest
+  Are lilac-sweet and clear;
+The virile rhymes of merrier times
+  Sound fair upon mine ear.
+
+Sweet is their sylvan cadence
+  And sweet their simple art.
+The balladry of the greenwood tree
+  Stirs memories in my heart.
+
+O braver days and elder
+  With mickle valour dight,
+How ye bring back the time, alack!
+  When Harry Smith could write!
+
+
+
+
+Maud Muller Mutatur
+
+    In 1909 toilet goods were not considered a serious matter and
+    no special department of the catalogs was devoted to it. A
+    few perfumes and creams were scattered here and there among
+    bargain goods.
+
+    In 1919 an assortment of perfumes that would rival any city
+    department store is shown, along with six pages of other
+    toilet articles, including rouge and eyebrow pencils.
+
+    _--From "How the Farmer Has Changed in a Decade: Toilet
+    Goods," in Farm and Fireside's advertisement._
+
+
+Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
+Powdered her nose with _Bon Sachet_.
+
+Beneath her lingerie hat appeared
+Eyebrows and cheeks that were well veneered.
+
+Singing she rocked on the front piazz,
+To the tune of "The Land of the Sky Blue Jazz."
+
+But the song expired on the summer air,
+And she said "This won't get me anywhere."
+
+The judge in his car looked up at her
+And signalled "Stop!" to his brave chauffeur.
+
+He smiled a smile that is known as broad,
+And he said to Miss Muller, "Hello, how's Maud?"
+
+"What sultry weather this is? Gee whiz!"
+Said Maud. Said the judge, "I'll say it is."
+
+"Your coat is heavy. Why don't you shed it?
+Have a drink?" said Maud. Said the judge, "You said it."
+
+And Maud, with the joy of bucolic youth,
+Blended some gin and some French vermouth.
+
+Maud Muller sighed, as she poured the gin,
+"I've got something on Whittier's heroine."
+
+"Thanks," said the judge, "a peppier brew
+From a fairer hand was never knew."
+
+And when the judge had had number 7,
+Maud seemed an angel direct from Heaven.
+
+And the judge declared, "You're a lovely girl,
+An' I'm for you, Maudie, I'll tell the worl'."
+
+And the judge said, "Marry me, Maudie dearie?"
+And Maud said yes to the well known query.
+
+And she often thinks, in her rustic way,
+As she powders her nose with _Bon Sachet_,
+
+"I never'n the world would 'a got that guy,
+If I'd waited till after the First o' July."
+
+And of all glad words of prose or rhyme,
+The gladdest are, "Act while there yet is time."
+
+
+
+
+The Carlyles
+
+    [I was talking with a newspaper man the other day who seemed
+    to think that the fact that Mrs. Carlyle threw a teacup at
+    Mr. Carlyle should be given to the public merely as a fact.
+
+    But a fact presented to people without the proper--or even,
+    if necessary, without the improper--human being to go with it
+    does not mean anything and does not really become alive or
+    caper about in people's minds.
+
+    But what I want and what I believe most people want when a
+    fact is being presented is one or two touches that will make
+    natural and human questions rise in and play about like this:
+
+    "Did a servant see Mrs. Carlyle throw the teacup? Was the
+    servant an English servant with an English imagination or an
+    Irish servant with an Irish imagination? What would the fact
+    have been like if Mr. Browning had been listening at the
+    keyhole? Or Oscar Wilde, or Punch, or the Missionary Herald,
+    or The New York Sun, or the Christian Science Monitor?"
+    --GERALD STANLEY LEE in the Satevepost.]
+
+
+BY OUR OWN ROBERT BROWNING
+
+As a poet heart- and fancy-free--whole,
+I listened at the Carlyles' keyhole;
+And I saw, I, Robert Browning, saw,
+Tom hurl a teacup at Jane's jaw.
+She silent sat, nor tried to speak up
+When came the wallop with the teacup--
+A cup not filled with Beaune or Clicquot,
+But one that brimmed with Orange Pekoe.
+"Jane Welsh Carlyle," said Thomas, bold,
+"The tea you brewed for m' breakfast's cold!
+I'm feeling low i' my mind; a thing
+You know b' this time. Have at you!"... Bing!
+And hurled, threw he at her the teacup;
+And I wrote it, deeming it unique, up.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+BY OUR OWN OSCAR WILDE
+
+LADY LEFFINGWELL (_coldly_).--A full teacup!
+What a waste! So many good women
+and so little good tea.
+
+          [_Exit Lady Leffingwell_]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+FROM OUR OWN "PUNCH"
+
+A MANCHESTER autograph collector, we are
+informed, has just offered L50 for the signature
+of Tea Carlyle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+FROM OUR OWN "MISSIONARY HERALD"
+
+From what clouds cannot sunshine be distilled!
+When, in a fit of godless rage, Mr.
+Carlyle threw a teacup at the good woman he
+had vowed at the altar to love, honour, and
+obey, she smiled and the thought of China
+entered her head.
+
+Yesterday Mrs. Carlyle enrolled as a missionary,
+and will sail for the benighted land
+of the heathen to-morrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+FROM OUR OWN "NEW YORK SUN"
+
+Fortunate is MRS. JANE WELSH CARLYLE
+to have escaped with her life, though if she
+had not, no American worthy of the traditions
+of Washington could simulate acute
+sorrow. MR. CARLYLE, wearied of the dilatory
+methods of the BAKERIAN War Department,
+properly took the law into his own
+strong hands.
+
+The argument that resulted in the teacup's
+leaving MR. CARLYLE'S hands was common in
+most households. It transpires that MRS.
+CARLYLE, with a Bolshevistic tendency that
+makes patriots wonder what the Department
+of Justice--to borrow a phrase from a newspaper
+cartoonist--thinks about, had been
+championing the British-Wilson League of
+Nations, that league which will make ironically
+true our "E Pluribus Unum"--one of
+many. Repeated efforts by MR. CARLYLE, in
+appeals to the Department of Justice, the
+Military Intelligence Division, and the City
+Government, were of no avail. And so MR.
+CARLYLE, like the red-blooded American he
+is, did what the authorities should have saved
+him the embarrassing trouble of doing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+FROM OUR OWN "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR"
+
+It is reported that Mr. Thomas Carlyle has
+thrown a teacup at Mrs. Carlyle, and much
+exaggerated and acrid comment has been
+made on this incident.
+
+If it had been a whiskey glass, or a cocktail
+glass, the results might have been fatal.
+In Oregon, which went dry in 1916, the number
+of women hit by crockery has decreased
+4.2 per cent in three years. Of 1,844 women
+in Oregon hit by crockery in 1915, 1,802 were
+hit by glasses containing, or destined to contain,
+alcoholic stimulants. More than 94 per
+cent of these accidents resulted fatally. The
+remaining 22 women, hit by tea or coffee
+cups, are now happy, useful members of
+society.
+
+
+
+
+If Amy Lowell Had Been James
+Whitcomb Riley
+
+
+A DECADE
+
+When you came you were like red wine and honey,
+And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
+Now you are like morning bread--
+Smooth and pleasant,
+I hardly taste you at all, for I know your savour,
+But I am completely nourished.
+        --AMY LOWELL, in _The Chimaera_.
+
+When I wuz courtin' Annie, she wuz honey an' red wine,
+She made me feel all jumpy, did that ol' sweetheart o' mine;
+Wunst w'en I went to Crawfordsville, on one o' them there trips,
+I kissed her--an' the burnin' taste wuz sizzlin' on my lips.
+An' now I've married Annie, an' I see her all the time,
+I do not feel the daily need o' bustin' into rhyme.
+An' now the wine-y taste is gone, fer Annie's always there,
+An' I take her fer granted now, the same ez sun an' air.
+But though the honey taste wuz sweet, an' though the wine wuz strong,
+Yet ef I lost the sun an' air, I couldn't git along.
+
+
+
+
+If the Advertising Man Had
+Been Gilbert
+
+
+Never mind that slippery wet street--
+The tire with a thousand claws will hold you.
+Stop as quickly as you will--
+Those thousand claws grip the road like a vise.
+Turn as sharply as you will--
+Those thousand claws take a steel-prong grip on the road to prevent a
+  side skid.
+You're safe--safer than anything else will make you--
+Safe as you would be on a perfectly dry street.
+And those thousand claws are mileage insurance, too.
+
+--_From the Lancaster Tire and Rubber Company's
+advertisement in the Satevepost._
+
+
+Never mind it if you find it wet upon the street and slippery;
+  Never bother if the street is full of ooze;
+Do not fret that you'll upset, that you will spoil your summer frippery,
+  You may turn about as sharply as you choose.
+For those myriad claws will grip the road and keep the car from skidding,
+  And your steering gear will hold it fast and true;
+Every atom of the car will be responsive to your bidding,
+  AND those thousand claws are mileage insurance, too--
+        Oh, indubitably,
+  Those thousand claws are mileage insurance, too.
+
+
+
+
+If the Advertising Man Had
+Been Praed, or Locker
+
+
+"C'est distingue," says Madame La Mode,
+  'Tis a fabric of subtle distinction.
+For street wear it is superb.
+  The chic of the Rue de la Paix--
+The style of Fifth Avenue--
+  The character of Regent Street--
+All are expressed in this new fabric creation.
+  Leather-like but feather-light--
+It drapes and folds and distends to perfection.
+  And it may be had in dull or glazed,
+Plain or grained, basket weave or moired surfaces!
+
+--Advertisement of Pontine, in _Vanity Fair_.
+
+
+"C'est distingue," says Madame La Mode.
+  Subtly distinctive as a fabric fair;
+Nor Keats nor Shelley in his loftiest ode
+  Could thrum the line to tell how it will wear.
+
+The flair, the chic that is Rue de la Paix,
+  The style that is Fifth Avenue, New York.
+The character of Regent Street in May--
+  As leather strong, yet light as any cork.
+
+All these for her in this fair fabric clad.
+  (Light of my life, O thou my Genevieve!)
+In surface dull or glazed it may be had--
+  In plain or grained, moired or basket weave.
+
+
+
+
+Georgie Porgie
+
+BY MOTHER GOOSE AND OUR OWN SARA TEASDALE
+
+
+Bennie's kisses left me cold,
+  Eddie's made me yearn to die,
+Jimmie's made me laugh aloud,--
+  But Georgie's made me cry.
+
+Bennie sees me every night,
+  Eddie sees me every day,
+Jimmie sees me all the time,--
+  But Georgie stays away.
+
+
+
+
+On First Looking into Bee
+Palmer's Shoulders
+
+WITH BOWS TO KEATS AND KEITH'S
+
+["The World's Most Famous Shoulders"]
+
+_"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
+  When a new planet swims into his ken,
+Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
+  He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
+Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
+  Silent upon a peak in Darien."_
+
+    "Bee" Palmer has taken the raw, human--all too human--stuff
+    of the underworld, with its sighs of sadness and regret, its
+    mad merriment, its swift blaze of passion, its turbulent
+    dances, its outlaw music, its songs of the social bandit, and
+    made a new art product of the theatre. She is to the sources
+    of jazz and the blues what Francois Villon was to the wild
+    life of Paris. Both have found exquisite blossoms of art in
+    the sector of life most removed from the concert room and the
+    boudoir, and their harvest has the vigour, the resolute life,
+    the stimulating quality, the indelible impress of daredevil,
+    care-free, do-as-you-please lives of the picturesque men and
+    women who defy convention.--From Keith's Press Agent.
+
+
+Much have I travell'd in the realms of jazz,
+And many goodly arms and shoulders seen
+Quiver and quake--if you know what I mean;
+I've seen a lot, as everybody has.
+Some plaudits got, while others got the razz.
+But when I saw Bee Palmer, shimmy queen,
+I shook--in sympathy--my troubled bean,
+And said, "This is the utter razmataz."
+
+Then felt I like some patient with a pain
+When a new surgeon swims into his ken,
+Or like stout Brodie, when, with reeling brain,
+He jumped into the river. There and then
+I subwayed up and took the morning train
+To Norwalk, Naugatuck, and Darien.
+
+
+
+
+To a Vers Librist
+
+
+"Oh bard," I said, "your verse is free;
+The shackles that encumber me,
+The fetters that are my obsession,
+Are never gyves to your expression.
+
+"The fear of falsities in rhyme,
+In metre, quantity, or time,
+Is never yours; you sing along
+Your unpremeditated song."
+
+"Correct," the young vers librist said.
+"Whatever pops into my head
+I write, and have but one small fetter:
+I start each line with a capital letter.
+
+"But rhyme and metre--Ishkebibble!--
+Are actually neglig_ib_le.
+I go ahead, like all my school,
+Without a single silly rule."
+
+Of rhyme I am so reverential
+He made me feel inconsequential.
+I shed some strongly saline tears
+For bards I loved in younger years.
+
+"If Keats had fallen for your fluff,"
+I said, "he might have done good stuff.
+If Burns had thrown his rhymes away,
+His songs might still be sung to-day."
+
+O bards of rhyme and metre free,
+My gratitude goes out to ye
+For all your deathless lines--ahem!
+Let's see, now.... What _is_ one of them?
+
+
+
+
+How Do You Tackle Your Work?
+
+
+How do you tackle your work each day?
+  Are you scared of the job you find?
+Do you grapple the task that comes your way
+  With a confident, easy mind?
+Do you stand right up to the work ahead
+  Or fearfully pause to view it?
+Do you start to toil with a sense of dread?
+  Or feel that you're going to do it?
+
+You can do as much as you think you can,
+  But you'll never accomplish more;
+If you're afraid of yourself, young man,
+  There's little for you in store.
+For failure comes from the inside first,
+  It's there if we only knew it,
+And you can win, though you face the worst,
+  If you feel that you're going to do it.
+
+Success! It's found in the soul of you,
+  And not in the realm of luck!
+The world will furnish the work to do,
+  But you must provide the pluck.
+You can do whatever you think you can,
+  It's all in the way you view it.
+It's all in the start that you make, young man:
+  You must feel that you're going to do it.
+
+How do you tackle your work each day?
+  With confidence clear, or dread?
+What to yourself do you stop and say
+  When a new task lies ahead?
+What is the thought that is in your mind?
+  Is fear ever running through it?
+If so, just tackle the next you find
+  By thinking you're going to do it.
+
+--From "A Heap o' Livin'," by Edgar A. Guest
+
+
+I tackle my terrible job each day
+  With a fear that is well defined;
+And I grapple the task that comes my way
+  With no confidence in my mind.
+I try to evade the work ahead,
+  As I fearfully pause to view it,
+And I start to toil with a sense of dread,
+  And doubt that I'm going to do it.
+
+I can't do as much as I think I can,
+  And I never accomplish more.
+I am scared to death of myself, old man,
+  As I may have observed before.
+I've read the proverbs of Charley Schwab,
+  Carnegie, and Marvin Hughitt;
+But whenever I tackle a difficult job,
+  O gosh! how I hate to do it!
+
+I try to believe in my vaunted power
+  With that confident kind of bluff,
+But somebody tells me The Conning Tower
+  Is nothing but awful stuff.
+And I take up my impotent pen that night,
+  And idly and sadly chew it,
+As I try to write something merry and bright,
+  And I know that I shall not do it.
+
+And that's how I tackle my work each day--
+  With terror and fear and dread--
+And all I can see is a long array
+  Of empty columns ahead.
+And those are the thoughts that are in my mind,
+  And that's about all there's to it.
+As long as it's work, of whatever kind,
+  I'm certain I cannot do it.
+
+
+
+
+Recuerdo
+
+
+We were very tired, we were very merry--
+We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
+It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable--
+But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
+We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
+And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
+
+We were very tired, we were very merry--
+We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
+And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
+From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
+And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
+And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
+
+We were very tired, we were very merry,
+We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
+We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
+And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
+And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
+And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
+
+--EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, _in Poetry_.
+
+
+I was very sad, I was very solemn--
+I had worked all day grinding out a column.
+I came back from dinner at half-past seven,
+And I couldn't think of anything till quarter to eleven;
+And then I read "Recuerdo," by Miss Millay,
+And I said, "I'll bet a nickel I can write that way."
+
+I was very sad, I was very solemn--
+I had worked all day whittling out a column.
+I said, "I'll bet a nickel I can chirp such a chant,"
+And Mr. Geoffrey Parsons said, "I'll bet you can't."
+I bit a chunk of chocolate and found it sweet,
+And I listened to the trucking on Frankfort Street.
+
+I was very sad, I was very solemn--
+I had worked all day fooling with a column.
+I got as far as this and took my verses in
+To Mr. Geoffrey Parsons, who said, "Kid, you win."
+And--not that I imagine that any one'll care--
+I blew that jitney on a subway fare.
+
+
+
+
+On Tradition
+
+LINES PROVOKED BY HEARING A YOUNG MAN
+WHISTLING
+
+
+No carmine radical in Art,
+  I worship at the shrine of Form;
+Yet open are my mind and heart
+  To each departure from the norm.
+When Post-Impressionism emerged,
+  I hesitated but a minute
+Before I saw, though it diverged,
+  That there was something healthy in it.
+
+And eke when Music, heavenly maid,
+  Undid the chains that chafed her feet,
+I grew to like discordant shade--
+  Unharmony I thought was sweet.
+When verse divorced herself from sound,
+  I wept at first. Now I say: "Oh, well,
+I see some sense in Ezra Pound,
+  And nearly some in Amy Lowell."
+
+Yet, though I storm at every change,
+  And each mutation makes me wince,
+I am not shut to all things strange--
+  I'm rather easy to convince.
+But hereunto I set my seal,
+  My nerves awry, askew, abristling:
+_I'll never change the way I feel_
+  _Upon the question of Free Whistling._
+
+
+
+
+Unshackled Thoughts on Chivalry,
+Romance, Adventure, Etc.
+
+
+Yesterday afternoon, while I was
+walking on Worth Street,
+A gust of wind blew my hat off.
+I swore, petulantly, but somewhat noisily.
+A young woman had been near, walking behind me;
+She must have heard me, I thought.
+And I was ashamed, and embarrassedly sorry.
+So I said to her: "If you heard me, I beg your pardon."
+But she gave me a frightened look
+And ran across the street,
+Seeking a policeman.
+So I thought, Why waste five hours trying to versify the incident?
+Vers libre would serve her right.
+
+
+
+
+Results Ridiculous
+
+    ("Humourists have amused themselves by translating famous
+    sonnets into free verse. A result no less ridiculous would
+    have been obtained if somebody had rewritten a passage from
+    'Paradise Lost' as a rondeau."--GEORGE SOULE in the _New
+    Republic_.)
+
+
+"PARADISE LOST"
+
+Sing, Heavenly Muse, in lines that flow
+  More smoothly than the wandering Po,
+  Of man's descending from the height
+  Of Heaven itself, the blue, the bright,
+To Hell's unutterable throe.
+
+Of sin original and the woe
+That fell upon us here below
+    From man's pomonic primal bite--
+            Sing, Heavenly Muse!
+
+Of summer sun, of winter snow,
+Of future days, of long ago,
+  Of morning and "the shades of night,"
+  Of woman, "my ever new delight,"
+Go to it, Muse, and put us joe--
+            Sing, Heavenly Muse!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+"THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER"
+
+The wedding guest sat on a stone,
+  He could not choose but hear
+The mariner. They were there alone.
+The wedding guest sat on a stone.
+"I'll read you something of my own,"
+  Declared that mariner.
+The wedding guest sat on a stone--
+  He could not choose but hear.
+
+
+
+
+Regarding (1) the U. S. and (2)
+New York
+
+
+Before I was a travelled bird,
+  I scoffed, in my provincial way,
+At other lands; I deemed absurd
+  All nations but these U. S. A.
+
+And--although Middle-Western born--
+  Before I was a travelled guy,
+I laughed at, with unhidden scorn,
+  All cities but New York, N. Y.
+
+But now I've been about a bit--
+  How travel broadens! How it does!
+And I have found out this, to wit:
+  How right I was! How right I was!
+
+
+
+
+Broadmindedness
+
+
+How narrow his vision, how cribbed and confined!
+  How prejudiced all of his views!
+How hard is the shell of his bigoted mind!
+  How difficult he to excuse!
+
+His face should be slapped and his head should be banged;
+  A person like that ought to die!
+I want to be fair, but a man should be hanged
+  Who's any less liberal than I.
+
+
+
+
+The Jazzy Bard
+
+
+Labor is a thing I do not like;
+Workin's makes me want to go on strike;
+Sittin' in an office on a sunny afternoon,
+Thinkin' o' nothin' but a ragtime tune.
+
+'Cause I got the blues, I said I got the blues,
+I got the paragraphic blues.
+Been a-sittin' here since ha' pas' ten,
+Bitin' a hole in my fountain pen;
+Brain's all stiff in the creakin' joints,
+Can't make up no wheezes on the Fourteen Points;
+Can't think o' nothin' 'bout the end o' booze,
+'Cause I got the para--, I said the paragraphic, I mean the column
+  conductin' blues.
+
+
+
+
+Lines on and from "Bartlett's
+Familiar Quotations"
+
+    ("Sir: For the first time in twenty-three years 'Bartlett's
+    Familiar Quotations' has been revised and enlarged, and under
+    separate cover we are sending you a copy of the new edition.
+    We would appreciate an expression of opinion from you of the
+    value of this work after you have had an ample opportunity of
+    examining it."--THE PUBLISHERS.)
+
+
+Of making many books there is no end--
+  So Sancho Panza said, and so say I.
+Thou wert my guide, philosopher and friend
+  When only one is shining in the sky.
+
+Books cannot always please, however good;
+  The good is oft interred with their bones.
+To be great is to be misunderstood,
+  The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans.
+
+The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
+  I never write as funny as I can.
+Remote, unfriended, studious let me sit
+  And say to all the world, "This was a man!"
+
+Go, lovely Rose that lives its little hour!
+  Go, little booke! and let who will be clever!
+Roll on! From yonder ivy-mantled tower
+  The moon and I could keep this up forever.
+
+
+
+
+Thoughts in a Far Country
+
+
+I rise and applaud, in the patriot manner,
+  Whenever (as often) I hear
+The palpitant strains of "The Star Spangled Banner,"--
+          I shout and cheer.
+
+And also, to show my unbounded devotion,
+  I jump to me feet with a "Whee!"
+Whenever "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean"
+          Is played near me.
+
+My fervour's so hot and my ardour so searing--
+  I'm hoarse for a couple of days--
+You've heard me, I'm positive, joyously cheering
+          "The Marseillaise."
+
+I holler for "Dixie." I go off my noodle,
+  I whistle, I pound, and I stamp
+Whenever an orchestra plays "Yankee Doodle,"
+          Or "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp."
+
+But if you would enter my confidence, Reader,
+  Know that I'd go clean off my dome,
+And madly embrace any orchestra leader
+          For "Home, Sweet Home."
+
+
+
+
+When You Meet a Man from Your
+Own Home Town
+
+
+Sing, O Muse, in the treble clef,
+A little song of the A. E. F.,
+And pardon me, please, if I give vent
+To something akin to sentiment.
+But we have our moments Over Here
+When we want to cry and we want to cheer;
+And the hurrah feeling will not down
+When you meet a man from your own home town.
+
+It's many a lonesome, longsome day
+Since you embarked from the U. S. A.,
+And you met some men--it's a great big war--
+From towns that you never had known before;
+And you landed here, and your rest camp mate
+Was a man from some strange and distant state.
+Liked him? Yes; but you wanted to see
+A man from the town where you used to be.
+
+And then you went, by design or chance,
+All over the well-known map of France;
+And you yearned with a yearn that grew and grew
+To talk with a man from the burg you knew.
+And some lugubrious morning when
+Your morale is batting about .110,
+"Where are you from?" and you make reply,
+And the O. D. warrior says, "So am I."
+
+The universe wears a smiling face
+As you spill your talk of the old home place;
+You talk of the streets, and the home town jokes,
+And you find that you know each other's folks;
+And you haven't any more woes at all
+As you both decide that the world _is_ small--
+A statement adding to its renown
+When you meet a man from your own home town.
+
+You may be among the enlisted men,
+You may be a Lieut. or a Major-Gen.;
+Your home may be up in the Chilkoot Pass,
+In Denver, Col., or in Pittsfield, Mass.;
+You may have come from Chicago, Ill.,
+Buffalo, Portland, or Louisville--
+But there's nothing, I'm gambling, can keep you down,
+When you meet a man from your own home town.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you want to know why I wrote this pome,
+Well ... I've just had a talk with a guy from home.
+
+
+
+
+The Shepherd's Resolution
+
+_If she be not so to me,
+What care I how fair she be?_
+
+                --WITHER.
+
+BY OUR OWN JEROME D. KERN, AUTHOR OF
+"YOU'RE HERE AND I'M HERE"
+
+
+I don't care if a girl is fair
+If she doesn't seem beautiful to me,
+I won't waste away if she's fair as day,
+Or prettier than meadows in the month of May;
+As long as you are there for me to see,
+I don't care and you don't care
+How many others are beyond compare--
+You're the only one I like to have around.
+
+I won't mind if she's everything combined,
+If she doesn't seem wonderful to me,
+I won't fret if she's everybody's pet,
+Or considered by all as the one best bet;
+As long as you and I are only we,
+I don't care and you don't care
+How many others are beyond compare,
+You're the only one I like to have around.
+
+
+
+
+"It Was a Famous Victory"
+
+(1944)
+
+
+It was a summer evening;
+  Old Kaspar was at home,
+Sitting before his cottage door--
+  Like in the Southey pome--
+And near him, with a magazine,
+Idled his grandchild, Geraldine.
+
+"Why don't you ask me," Kaspar said
+  To the child upon the floor,
+"Why don't you ask me what I did
+  When I was in the war?
+They told me that each little kid
+Would surely ask me what I did.
+
+"I've had my story ready
+  For thirty years or more."
+"Don't bother, Grandpa," said the child;
+  "I find such things a bore.
+Pray leave me to my magazine,"
+Asserted little Geraldine.
+
+Then entered little Peterkin,
+  To whom his gaffer said:
+"You'd like to hear about the war?
+  How I was left for dead?"
+"No. And, besides," declared the youth,
+"How do I know you speak the truth?"
+
+Arose that wan, embittered man,
+  The hero of this pome,
+And walked, with not unsprightly step,
+  Down to the Soldiers' Home,
+Where he, with seven other men,
+Sat swapping lies till half-past ten.
+
+
+
+
+On Profiteering
+
+
+Although I hate
+  A profiteer
+With unabat-
+  Ed loathing;
+Though I detest
+  The price they smear
+On pants and vest
+  And clothing;
+
+Yet I admit
+  My meed of crime,
+Nor do one whit
+  Regret it;
+I'd triple my
+  Price for a rhyme,
+If I thought I
+  Could get it.
+
+
+
+
+Despite
+
+
+The terrible things that the Governor
+  Of Kansas says alarm me;
+And yet somehow we won the war
+  In spite of the Regular Army.
+
+The things they say of the old N. G.
+  Are bitter and cruel and hard;
+And yet we walloped the enemy
+  In spite of the National Guard.
+
+Too late, too late, was our work begun;
+  Too late were our forces sent;
+And yet we smeared the horrible Hun
+  In spite of the President.
+
+"What a frightful flivver this Baker is!"
+  Cried many a Senator;
+And yet we handed the Kaiser his
+  In spite of the Sec. of War.
+
+A sadly incompetent, sinful crew
+  Is that of the recent fight;
+And yet we put it across, we do,
+  In spite of a lot of spite.
+
+
+
+
+The Return of the Soldier
+
+
+Lady, when I left you
+  Ere I sailed the sea,
+Bitterly bereft you
+  Told me you would be.
+
+Frequently and often
+  When I fought the foe,
+How my heart would soften,
+  Pitying your woe!
+
+Still, throughout my yearning,
+  It was my belief
+That my mere returning
+  Would annul your grief.
+
+Arguing _ex parte_,
+  Maybe you can tell
+Why I find your heart A.
+  W. O. L.
+
+
+
+
+"I Remember, I Remember"
+
+
+I remember, I remember
+The house where I was born;
+The rent was thirty-two a month,
+Which made my father mourn.
+He said he could remember when
+_His_ father paid the rent;
+And when a man's expenses did
+Not take his every cent.
+
+I remember, I remember--
+My mother telling my cousin
+That eggs had gone to twenty-six
+Or seven cents a dozen;
+And how she told my father that
+She didn't like to speak
+Of things like that, but Bridget now
+Demanded four a week.
+
+I remember, I remember--
+And with a mirthless laugh--
+My weekly board at college took
+A jump to three and a half.
+I bought an eighteen-dollar suit,
+And father told me, "Sonny,
+I'll pay the bill this time, but, Oh,
+I am not made of money!"
+
+I remember, I remember,
+When I was young and brave
+And I declared, "Well, Birdie, we
+Shall now begin to save."
+It was a childish ignorance,
+But now 'tis little joy
+To know I'm farther off from wealth
+Than when I was a boy.
+
+
+
+
+The Higher Education
+
+    (Harvard's prestige in football is a leading factor. The best
+    players in the big preparatory schools prefer to study at
+    Cambridge, where they can earn fame on the gridiron. They do
+    not care to be identified with Yale and Princeton.--JOE VILA
+    in the _Evening Sun_.)
+
+
+"Father," began the growing youth,
+  "Your pleading finds me deaf;
+Although I know you speak the truth
+  About the course at Shef.
+But think you that I have no pride,
+  To follow such a trail?
+I cannot be identified
+  With Princeton or with Yale."
+
+"Father," began another lad,
+  Emerging from his prep;
+"I know you are a Princeton grad,
+  But the coaches have no pep.
+But though the Princeton profs provide
+  Fine courses to inhale;
+I cannot be identified
+  With Princeton or with Yale."
+
+"I know," he said, "that Learning helps
+  A lot of growing chaps;
+That Yale has William Lyon Phelps,
+  And Princeton Edward Capps.
+But while, within the Football Guide,
+  The Haughton hosts prevail,
+I cannot be identified
+  With Princeton or with Yale."
+
+
+
+
+War and Peace
+
+
+"This war is a terrible thing," he said,
+"With its countless numbers of needless dead;
+A futile warfare it seems to me,
+Fought for no principle I can see.
+Alas, that thousands of hearts should bleed
+For naught but a tyrant's boundless greed!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Said the wholesale grocer, in righteous mood,
+As he went to adulterate salable food.
+
+Spake as follows the merchant king:
+"Isn't this war a disgraceful thing?
+Heartless, cruel, and useless, too;
+It doesn't seem that it _can_ be true.
+Think of the misery, want, and fear!
+We ought to be grateful we've no war here.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Six a week"--to a girl--"That's flat!
+I can get a thousand to work for that."
+
+
+
+
+Fifty-Fifty
+
+
+For something like eleven summers
+  I've written things that aimed to teach
+Our careless mealy-mouthed mummers
+  To be more sedulous of speech.
+
+So sloppy of articulation
+  So limping and so careless they
+About distinct enunciation,
+  Often I don't know what they say.
+
+The other night an able actor,
+  Declaiming of some lines I heard,
+I hailed a public benefactor,
+  As I distinguished every word.
+
+But, oh! the subtle disappointment!
+  Thorn on the celebrated rose
+And fly within the well-known ointment!
+  (Allusions everybody knows.)
+
+Came forth the words exact and snappy.
+  And as I sat there, that P.M.,
+I mused, "Was I not just as happy
+  When I could not distinguish them?"
+
+
+
+
+"So Shines a Good Deed in a
+Naughty World"
+
+
+There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous rich;
+He gave away his millions to the colleges and sich;
+And people cried: "The hypocrite! He ought to understand
+The ones who really need him are the children of this land."
+
+When Andrew Croesus built a home for children who were sick,
+The people said they rather thought he did it as a trick,
+And writers said: "He thinks about the drooping girls and boys,
+But what about conditions with the men whom he employs?"
+
+There was a man in our town who said that he would share
+His profits with his laborers, for that was only fair,
+And people said: "Oh, isn't he the shrewd and foxy gent?
+It cost him next to nothing for that free advertisement."
+
+There was a man in our town who had the perfect plan
+To do away with poverty and other ills of man,
+But he feared the public jeering, and the folks who would defame him,
+So he never told the plan he had, and I can hardly blame him.
+
+
+
+
+Vain Words
+
+
+Humble, surely, mine ambition;
+  It is merely to construct
+Some occasion or condition
+  When I may say "usufruct."
+
+Earnest am I and assiduous;
+  Yet I'm certain that I shan't amount
+To a lot till I use "viduous,"
+  "Indiscerptible," and "tantamount."
+
+
+
+
+On the Importance of Being
+Earnest
+
+
+"Gentle Jane was as good as gold,"
+  To borrow a line from Mr. Gilbert;
+She hated War with a hate untold,
+  She was a pacifistic filbert.
+If you said "Perhaps"--she'd leave the hall.
+You couldn't argue with her at all.
+
+"Teasing Tom was a very bad boy,"
+  (Pardon my love for a good quotation).
+To talk of war was his only joy,
+  And his single purpose was Preparation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And what both of these children had to say
+I never knew, for I ran away.
+
+
+
+
+It Happens in the B. R. Families
+
+WITH THE CUSTOMARY OBEISANCES
+
+
+'Twas on the shores that round our coast
+  From Deal to Newport lie
+That I roused from sleep in a huddled heap
+  An elderly wealthy guy.
+
+His hair was graying, his hair was long,
+  And graying and long was he;
+And I heard this grouch on the shore avouch,
+  In a singular jazzless key:
+
+"Oh, I am a cook and a waitress trim
+  And the maid of the second floor,
+And a strong chauffeur and a housekeep_er_.
+  And the man who tends the door!"
+
+And he shook his fists and he tore his hair,
+  And he started to frisk and play,
+Till I couldn't help thinking the man had been drinking,
+  So I said (in the Gilbert way):
+
+"Oh, elderly man, I don't know much
+  Of the ways of societee,
+But I'll eat my friend if I comprehend
+  However you can be
+
+"At once a cook and a waitress trim
+  And the maid of the second floor,
+And a strong chauffeur and a housekeep_er_,
+  And the man who tends the door."
+
+Then he smooths his hair with a nervous air,
+  And a gulp in his throat he swallows,
+And that elderly guy he then lets fly
+  Substantially as follows:
+
+"We had a house down Newport way,
+  And we led a simple life;
+There was only I," said the elderly guy,
+  "And my daughter and my wife.
+
+"And of course the cook and the waitress trim
+  And the maid of the second floor,
+And a strong chauffeur and a housekeep_er_,
+  And the man who tends the door.
+
+"One day the cook she up and left,
+  She up and left us flat.
+She was getting a hundred and ten a mon-
+  Th, but she couldn't work for that.
+
+"And the waitress trim was her bosom friend,
+  And she wouldn't stay no more;
+And our strong chauffeur eloped with her
+  Who was maid of the second floor.
+
+"And we couldn't get no other help,
+  So I had to cook and wait.
+It was quite absurd," wept the elderly bird.
+  "I deserve a better fate.
+
+"And I drove the car and I made the beds
+  Till the housekeeper up and quit;
+And the man at the door found that a bore,
+  Which is why I am, to wit:
+
+"At once a cook and a waitress trim
+  And the maid of the second floor,
+And a strong chauffeur and a housekeep_er_,
+  And the man who tends the door."
+
+
+
+
+Abelard and Heloise
+
+    ["There are so many things I want to talk to you about."
+    Abelard probably said to Heloise, "but how can I when I can
+    only think about kissing you?"--KATHARINE LANE in the
+    _Evening Mail_.]
+
+
+Said Abelard to Heloise:
+"Your tresses blowing in the breeze
+Enchant my soul; your cheek allures;
+I never knew such lips as yours."
+
+Said Heloise to Abelard:
+"I know that it is cruel, hard,
+To make you fold your yearning arms
+And think of things besides my charms."
+
+Said Abelard to Heloise:
+"Pray let's discuss the Portuguese;
+Their status in the League of Nations.
+... Come, slip me seven osculations."
+
+"The Fourteen Points," said Heloise,
+"Are pure Woodrovian fallacies."
+Said Abelard: "Ten times fourteen
+The points you have, O beaucoup queen!"
+
+"Lay off," said Heloise, "all that stuff.
+I've heard the same old thing enough."
+"But," answered Abelard, "your lips
+Put all my thoughts into eclipse."
+
+"O Abelard," said Heloise,
+"Don't take so many liberties."
+"O Heloise," said Abelard,
+"I do it but to show regard."
+
+And Heloise told her chum that night
+That Abelard was Awful Bright;
+And--thus is drawn the cosmic plan--
+She _loved_ an Intellectual Man.
+
+
+
+
+Lines Written on the Sunny Side
+of Frankfort Street
+
+
+Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade,
+  (I credit Milton in parenthesis),
+Among the speculations that she made
+            Was this:
+
+"When"--these her very words--"when you return,
+  A slave to duty's harsh commanding call,
+Will you, I wonder, ever sigh and yearn
+            At all?"
+
+Doubt, honest doubt, sat then upon my brow.
+  (Emotion is a thing I do not plan.)
+I could not fairly answer then, but now
+            I can.
+
+Yes, Amaryllis, I can tell you this,
+  Can answer publicly and unafraid:
+You haven't any notion how I miss
+            The shade.
+
+
+
+
+Fifty-Fifty
+
+    [We think about the feminine faces we meet in the streets,
+    and experience a passing melancholy because we are
+    unacquainted with some of the girls we see.--From "The Erotic
+    Motive in Literature," by ALBERT MORDELL.]
+
+
+Whene'er I take my walks abroad,
+  How many girls I see
+Whose form and features I applaud
+  With well-concealed glee!
+
+I'd speak to many a sonsie maid,
+  Or willowy or obese,
+Were I not fearful, and afraid
+  She'd yell for the police.
+
+And Melancholy, bittersweet,
+  Marks me then as her own,
+Because I lack the nerve to greet
+  The girls I might have known.
+
+Yet though with sadness I am fraught,
+  (As I remarked before),
+There is one sweetly solemn thought
+  Comes to me o'er and o'er:
+
+For every shadow cloud of woe
+  Hath argentine alloy;
+I see some girls I do not know,
+  And feel a passing joy.
+
+
+
+
+To Myrtilla
+
+
+Twelve fleeting years ago, my Myrt,
+  (_Eheu fugaces!_ maybe more)
+I wrote of the directoire skirt
+            You wore.
+
+Ten years ago, Myrtilla mine,
+  The hobble skirt engaged my pen.
+That was, I calculate, in Nine-
+            Teen Ten.
+
+The polo coat, the feathered lid,
+  The phony furs of yesterfall,
+The current shoe--I tried to kid
+            Them all.
+
+Vain every vitriolic bit,
+  Silly all my sulphuric song.
+Rube Goldberg said a bookful; it
+            'S all wrong.
+
+Bitter the words I used to fling,
+  But you, despite my angriest Note,
+Were never swayed by anything
+            I wrote.
+
+So I surrender. I am beat.
+  And, though the admission rather girds,
+In any garb you're just too sweet
+            For words.
+
+
+
+
+A Psalm of Labouring Life
+
+
+Tell me not, in doctored numbers,
+  Life is but a name for work!
+For the labour that encumbers
+  Me I wish that I could shirk.
+
+Life is phony! Life is rotten!
+  And the wealthy have no soul;
+Why should you be picking cotton?
+  Why should I be mining coal?
+
+Not employment and not sorrow
+  Is my destined end or way;
+But to act that each to-morrow
+  Finds me idler than to-day.
+
+Work is long, and plutes are lunching;
+  Money is the thing I crave;
+But my heart continues punching
+  Funeral time-clocks to the grave.
+
+In the world's uneven battle,
+  In the swindle known as life,
+Be not like the stockyards cattle--
+  Stick your partner with a knife!
+
+Trust no Boss, however pleasant!
+  Capital is but a curse!
+Strike,--strike in the living present!
+  Fill, oh fill, the bulging purse!
+
+Lives of strikers all remind us
+  We can make our lives a crime,
+And, departing, leave behind us
+  Bills for double overtime.
+
+Charges that, perhaps another,
+  Working for a stingy ten
+Bucks a day, some mining brother
+  Seeing, shall walk out again.
+
+Let us, then, be up and striking,
+  Discontent with all of it;
+Still undoing, still disliking,
+  Learn to labour--and to quit.
+
+
+
+
+Ballade of Ancient Acts
+
+AFTER HENLEY
+
+
+Where are the wheezes they essayed
+And where the smiles they made to flow?
+Where's Caron's seltzer siphon laid,
+A squirt from which laid Herbert low?
+Where's Charlie Case's comic woe
+And Georgie Cohan's nasal drawl?
+The afterpiece? The olio?
+Into the night go one and all.
+
+Where are the japeries, fresh or frayed,
+That Fields and Lewis used to throw?
+Where is the horn that Shepherd played?
+The slide trombone that Wood would blow?
+Amelia Glover's l. f. toe?
+The Rays and their domestic brawl?
+Bert Williams with "Oh, _I_ Don't Know?"
+Into the night go one and all.
+
+Where's Lizzie Raymond, peppy jade?
+The braggart Lew, the simple Joe?
+And where the Irish servant maid
+That Jimmie Russell used to show?
+Charles Sweet, who tore the paper snow?
+Ben Harney's where? And Artie Hall?
+Nash Walker, Darktown's grandest beau?
+Into the night go one and all.
+
+
+L'ENVOI
+
+Prince, though our children laugh "Ho! Ho!"
+At us who gleefully would fall
+For acts that played the Long Ago,
+Into the night go one and all.
+
+
+
+
+To a Prospective Cook
+
+
+Curly Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be ours?
+Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet weed the flowers,
+But stand in the kitchen and cook a fine meal,
+And ride every night in an automobile.
+
+Curly Locks, Curly Locks, come to us soon!
+Thou needst not to rise until mid-afternoon;
+Thou mayst be Croatian, Armenian, or Greek;
+Thy guerdon shall be what thou askest per week.
+
+Curly Locks, Curly Locks, give us a chance!
+Thou shalt not wash windows, nor iron my pants.
+Oh, come to the cosiest of seven-room bowers,
+Curly Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be ours?
+
+
+
+
+Variation on a Theme
+
+June 30, 1919.
+
+
+Notably fond of music, I dote on a clearer tone
+Than ever was blared by a bugle or zoomed by a saxophone;
+And the sound that opens the gates for me of a Paradise revealed
+Is something akin to the note revered by the blessed Eugene Field,
+Who sang in pellucid phrasing that I perfectly well recall
+Of the clink of the ice in the pitcher that the boy brings up the hall.
+But sweeter to me than the sparrow's song or the goose's autumn honks
+Is the sound of the ice in the shaker as the barkeeper mixes a Bronx.
+
+Between the dark and the daylight, when I'm worried about The Tower,
+Comes a pause in the day's tribulations that is known as the cocktail
+  hour;
+And my soul is sad and jaded, and my heart is a thing forlorn,
+And I view the things I have written with a sickening, scathing scorn.
+Oh, it's then I fare with some other slave who is hired for the things
+  he writes
+To a Den of Sin where they mingle gin--such as Lipton's, Mouquin's, or
+  Whyte's,
+And my spirit thrills to a music sweeter than Sullivan or Puccini--
+The swash of the ice in the shaker as he mixes a Dry Martini.
+
+The drys will assert that metallic sound is the selfsame canon made
+By the ice in the shaker that holds a drink like orange or lemonade;
+But on the word of a travelled man and a bard who has been around,
+The sound of tin on ice and gin is a snappier, happier sound.
+And I mean to hymn, as soon as I have a moment of leisure time,
+The chill susurrus of cocktail ice in an adequate piece of rhyme.
+But I've just had an invitation to hark, at a beckoning bar,
+To the sound of the ice in the shaker as the barkeeper mixes a Star.
+
+
+
+
+"Such Stuff as Dreams"
+
+
+Jenny kiss'd me in a dream;
+  So did Elsie, Lucy, Cora,
+Bessie, Gwendolyn, Eupheme,
+  Alice, Adelaide, and Dora.
+Say of honour I'm devoid,
+  Say monogamy has miss'd me,
+But don't say to Dr. Freud
+        Jenny kiss'd me.
+
+
+
+
+The Ballad of Justifiable Homicide
+
+
+They brought to me his mangled corpse
+  And I feared lest I should swing.
+"O tell me, tell me,--and make it brief--
+  Why hast thou done this thing?
+
+"Had this man robbed the starving poor
+  Or lived a gunman's life,
+Had he set fire to cottages,
+  Or run off with thy wife?"
+
+"He hath not robbed the starving poor,
+  Nor lived a gunman's life;
+He hath set fire to no cottage,
+  Nor run off with my wife.
+
+"Ye ask me such a question that
+  It now my lips unlocks:
+I learned he was the man who planned
+  The second balcony box."
+
+The jury pondered never an hour,
+  They thought not even a little,
+But handed in unanimously
+  A verdict of acquittal.
+
+
+
+
+The Ballad of the Murdered
+Merchant
+
+
+All stark and cold the merchant lay,
+  All cold and stark lay he.
+And who hath killed this fair mer_chant_?
+  Now tell the truth to me.
+
+Oh, I have killed this fair mer_chant_
+  Will never again draw breath;
+Oh, I have made this fair mer_chant_
+  To come unto his death.
+
+Oh, why hast thou killed this fair mer_chant_
+  Whose corse I now behold?
+And why hast caused this man to lie
+  In death all stark and cold?
+
+Oh, I have killed this fair mer_chant_
+  Whose kith and kin make moan,
+For that he hath stolen my precious time
+  When he useth the telephone.
+
+The telephone bell rang full and clear;
+  The receiver did I seize.
+"Hello!" quoth I, and quoth a girl,
+  "Hello!... One moment, please."
+
+I waited moments ane and twa,
+  And moments three and four,
+And then I sought that fair mer_chant_
+  And spilled his selfish gore.
+
+That business man who scorneth to waste
+  His moments sae rich and fine
+In calling a man to the telephone
+  Shall never again waste mine!
+
+And every time a henchwom_an_
+  Shall cause me a moment's loss,
+I'll forthwith fare to that of_fice_
+  And stab to death her boss.
+
+Rise up! Rise up! thou blessed knight!
+  And off thy bended knees!
+Go forth and slay all folk who make
+  Us wait "One moment, please."
+
+
+
+
+A Gotham Garden of Verses
+
+
+I
+
+In summer when the days are hot
+The subway is delayed a lot;
+In winter, quite the selfsame thing;
+In autumn also, and in spring.
+
+And does it not seem strange to you
+That transportation is askew
+In this--I pray, restrain your mirth!--
+In this, the Greatest Town on Earth?
+
+
+II
+
+All night long and every night
+The neighbours dance for my delight;
+I hear the people dance and sing
+Like practically anything.
+
+Women and men and girls and boys,
+All making curious kinds of noise
+And dancing in so weird a way,
+I never saw the like by day.
+
+So loud a show was never heard
+As that which yesternight occurred:
+They danced and sang, as I have said,
+As I lay wakeful on my bed.
+
+They shout and cry and yell and laugh
+And play upon the phonograph;
+And endlessly I count the sheep,
+Endeavouring to fall asleep.
+
+
+III
+
+It is very nice to think
+This town is full of meat and drink;
+That is, I'd think it very nice
+If my papa but had the price.
+
+
+IV
+
+This town is so full of a number of folks,
+I'm sure there will always be matter for jokes.
+
+
+
+
+Lines on Reading Frank J. Wilstach's
+"A Dictionary of Similes"
+
+
+As neat as wax, as good as new,
+As true as steel, as truth is true,
+Good as a sermon, keen as hate,
+Full as a tick, and fixed as fate--
+
+Brief as a dream, long as the day,
+Sweet as the rosy morn in May,
+Chaste as the moon, as snow is white,
+Broad as barn doors, and new as sight--
+
+Useful as daylight, firm as stone,
+Wet as a fish, dry as a bone,
+Heavy as lead, light as a breeze--
+Frank Wilstach's book of similes.
+
+
+
+
+The Dictaphone Bard
+
+    [And here is a suggestion: Did you ever try dictating your
+    stories or articles to the dictaphone for the first draft? I
+    would be glad to have you come down and make the
+    experiment.--From a shorthand reporter's circular letter.]
+
+(As "The Ballad of the Tempest" would have
+to issue from the dictaphone to the stenographer)
+
+_Begin each line with a capital. Indent alternate
+lines. Double space after each fourth
+line._
+
+
+_We were crowded in the cabin comma
+  Not a soul would dare to sleep dash comma
+It was midnight on the waters comma
+  And a storm was on the deep period_
+
+_Apostrophe Tis a fearful thing in capital Winter
+  To be shattered by the blast comma
+And to hear the rattling trumpet
+  Thunder colon quote capital Cut away the mast exclamation point
+    close quote_
+
+_So we shuddered there in silence comma dash
+  For the stoutest held his breath comma
+While the hungry sea was roaring comma
+ And the breakers talked with capital Death period_
+
+_As thus we sat in darkness comma
+  Each one busy with his prayers comma
+Quote We are lost exclamation point close quote the captain shouted comma
+  As he staggered down the stairs period_
+
+_But his little daughter whispered comma
+  As she took his icy hand colon
+Quote Isn't capital God upon the ocean comma
+  Just the same as on the land interrogation point close quote_
+
+_Then we kissed the little maiden comma
+  And we spake in better cheer comma
+And we anchored safe in harbor
+  When the morn was shining clear period_
+
+
+
+
+The Comfort of Obscurity
+
+INSPIRED BY READING MR. KIPLING'S POEMS AS
+PRINTED IN THE NEW YORK PAPERS
+
+
+Though earnest and industrious,
+I still am unillustrious;
+    No papers empty purses
+    Printing verses
+        Such as mine.
+No lack of fame is chronicker
+Than that about my monicker;
+    My verse is never cabled
+    At a fabled
+        Rate per line.
+
+Still though the Halls
+Of Literature are closed
+To me a bard obscure I
+Have a consolation The
+Copyreaders crude and rough
+Can't monkey with my
+Humble stuff and change MY
+Punctuation.
+
+
+
+
+Ballade of the Traffickers
+
+
+Up goes the price of our bread--
+Up goes the cost of our caking!
+People must ever be fed;
+Bakers must ever be baking.
+So, though our nerves may be quaking,
+Dumbly, in arrant despair,
+Pay we the crowd that is taking
+All that the traffic will bear.
+
+Costly to sleep in a bed!
+Costlier yet to be waking!
+Costly for one who is wed!
+Ruinous for one who is raking!
+Tradespeople, ducking and draking,
+Charge you as much as they dare,
+Asking, without any faking,
+All that the traffic will bear.
+
+Roof that goes over our head,
+Thirst so expensive for slaking,
+Paper, apparel, and lead--
+Why are their prices at breaking?
+Yet, though our purses be aching,
+Little the traffickers care;
+Getting, for chopping and steaking,
+All that the traffic will bear.
+
+
+L'ENVOI
+
+Take thou my verses, I pray, King,
+Letting my guerdon be fair.
+Even a bard must be making
+All that the traffic will bear.
+
+
+
+
+To W. Hohenzollern, on Discontinuing
+The Conning Tower
+
+
+William, it was, I think, three years ago--
+  As I recall, one cool October morning--
+(You have _The Tribune_ files; I think they'll show
+        I gave you warning).
+
+I said, in well-selected words and terse,
+  In phrases balanced, yet replete with power,
+That I should cease to pen the prose and verse
+        Known as The Tower.
+
+That I should stop this Labyrinth of Light--
+  Though stopping make the planet leaden-hearted--
+Unless you stopped the well-known _Schrecklichkeit_
+        Your nation started.
+
+I printed it in type that you could read;
+  My paragraphs were thewed, my rhymes were sinewed.
+You paid, I judge from what ensued, no heed ...
+        The war continued.
+
+And though my lines with fortitude were fraught,
+  Although my words were strong, and stripped of stuffing,
+You, William, thought--oh, yes, you did--you thought
+        That I was bluffing.
+
+You thought that I would fail to see it through!
+  You thought that, at the crux of things, I'd cower!
+How little, how imperfectly you knew
+        The Conning Tower!
+
+You'll miss the column at the break of day.
+  I have no fear that I shall be forgotten.
+You'll miss the daily privilege to say:
+        "That stuff is rotten!"
+
+Or else--as sometimes has occurred--when I
+  Have chanced upon a lucky line to blunder,
+You'll miss the precious privilege to cry:
+        "That bird's a wonder!"
+
+Well, William, when your people cease to strafe,
+  When you have put an end to all this war stuff,
+When all the world is reasonably safe,
+        I'll write some more stuff.
+
+And when you miss the quip and wanton wile,
+  And learn you can't endure the Towerless season,
+O William, I shall not be petty ... I'll
+        Listen to reason.
+
+_October 5, 1917._
+
+
+
+
+To W. Hohenzollern, on Resuming
+The Conning Tower
+
+
+Well, William, since I wrote you long ago--
+  As I recall, one cool October morning--
+(I have _The Tribune_ files. They clearly show
+        I gave you warning.)
+
+Since when I penned that consequential ode,
+  The world has seen a vast amount of slaughter,
+And under many a Gallic bridge has flowed
+        A lot of water.
+
+I said that when your people ceased to strafe,
+  That when you'd put an end to all this war stuff,
+And all the world was reasonably safe
+        I'd write some more stuff;
+
+That when you missed the quip and wanton wile
+  And learned you couldn't bear a Towerless season,
+I quote: "O, I shall not be petty.... I'll
+        Listen to reason."
+
+_Labuntur anni_, not to say _Eheu
+  Fugaces_! William, by my shoulders glistening!
+I have the final laugh, for it was you
+        Who did the listening.
+
+_January 15, 1919._
+
+
+
+
+Thoughts on the Cosmos
+
+
+I
+
+I do not hold with him who thinks
+The world is jonahed by a jinx;
+That everything is sad and sour,
+And life a withered hothouse flower.
+
+
+II
+
+I hate the Pollyanna pest
+Who says that All Is for the Best,
+And hold in high, unhidden scorn
+Who sees the Rose, nor feels the Thorn.
+
+
+III
+
+I do not like extremists who
+Are like the pair in (I) and (II);
+But how I hate the wabbly gink,
+Like me, who knows not what to think!
+
+
+
+
+On Environment
+
+
+I used to think that this environ-
+  Ment talk was all a lot of guff;
+Place mattered not with Keats and Byron
+              Stuff.
+
+If I have thoughts that need disclosing,
+  Bright be the day or hung with gloom,
+I'll write in Heaven or the composing-
+              Room.
+
+Times are when with my nerves a-tingle,
+  Joyous and bright the songs I sing;
+Though, gay, I can't dope out a single
+              Thing.
+
+And yet, by way of illustration,
+  The gods my graying head anoint ...
+I wrote _this_ piece at Inspiration
+               Point.
+
+
+
+
+The Ballad of the Thoughtless
+Waiter
+
+
+I saw him lying cold and dead
+  Who yesterday was whole.
+"Why," I inquired, "hath he expired?
+  And why hath fled his soul?"
+
+"But yesterday," his comrade said,
+  "All health was his, and strength;
+And this is why he came to die--
+  If I may speak at length.
+
+"But yesternight at dinnertime
+  At a not unknown cafe,
+He had a frugal meal as you
+  Might purchase any day.
+
+"The check for his so simple fare
+  Was only eighty cents,
+And a dollar bill with a right good will
+  Came from his opulence.
+
+"The waiter brought him twenty cents.
+  'Twas only yesternight
+That he softly said who now is dead
+  'Oh, keep it. 'At's a' right.'
+
+"And the waiter plainly uttered 'Thanks,'
+  With no hint of scorn or pride;
+And my comrade's heart gave a sudden start
+  And my comrade up and died."
+
+Now waiters overthwart this land,
+  In tearooms and in dives,
+Mute be your lips whatever the tips,
+  And save your customers' lives.
+
+
+
+
+Rus Vs. Urbs
+
+
+Whene'er the penner of this pome
+Regards a lovely country home,
+He sighs, in words not insincere,
+"I think I'd like to live out here."
+
+And when the builder of this ditty
+Returns to this pulsating city,
+The perpetrator of this pome
+Yearns for a lovely country home.
+
+
+
+
+"I'm Out of the Army Now"
+
+
+When first I doffed my olive drab,
+I thought, delightedly though mutely,
+"Henceforth I shall have pleasure ab-
+              Solutely."
+
+Dull with the drudgery of war,
+Sick of the very name of fighting,
+I yearned, I thought, for something more
+              Exciting.
+
+The rainbow be my guide, quoth I;
+My suit shall be a brave and proud one
+Gay-hued my socks; and oh, my tie
+              A loud one!
+
+For me the theatre and the dance;
+Primrose the path I would be wending;
+For me the roses of romance
+              Unending.
+
+Those were my inner thoughts that day
+(And those of many another million)
+When once again I should be a
+              Civilian.
+
+I would not miss the old o. d.;
+(Monotony I didn't much like)
+I would not miss the reveille,
+              And such like.
+
+I don't ... And do I now enjoy
+My walks along the primrose way so?
+Is civil life the life? Oh, boy,
+              I'll say so.
+
+
+
+
+"Oh Man!"
+
+
+Man hath harnessed the lightning;
+  Man hath soared to the skies;
+  Mountain and hill are clay to his will;
+Skilful he is, and wise.
+Sea to sea hath he wedded,
+  Canceled the chasm of space,
+Given defeat to cold and heat;
+  Splendour is his, and grace.
+
+His are the topless turrets;
+  His are the plumbless pits;
+Earth is slave to his architrave,
+  Heaven is thrall to his wits.
+And so in the golden future,
+  He who hath dulled the storm
+(As said above) may make a glove
+  That'll keep my fingers warm.
+
+
+
+
+An Ode in Time of Inauguration
+
+(March 4, 1913)
+
+
+Thine aid, O Muse, I consciously beseech;
+  I crave thy succour, ask for thine assistance
+That men may cry: "Some little ode! A peach!"
+  O Muse, grant me the strength to go the distance!
+For odes, I learn, are dithyrambs, and long;
+  Exalted feeling, dignity of theme
+And complicated structure guide the song.
+  (All this from Webster's book of high esteem.)
+
+Let complicated structure not becloud
+  My lucid lines, nor weight with overloading.
+To Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth and that crowd
+  I yield the bays for ground and lofty oding.
+Mine but the task to trace a country's growth,
+  As evidenced by each inauguration
+From Washington's to Wilson's primal oath--
+  In these U. S., the celebrated nation.
+
+But stay! or ever that I start to sing,
+  Or e'er I loose my fine poetic forces,
+I ought, I think, to do the decent thing,
+  To wit: give credit to my many sources:
+Barnes's "Brief History of the U. S. A.,"
+  Bryce, Ridpath, Scudder, Fiske, J. B. McMaster,
+A book of odes, a Webster, a Roget--
+  The bibliography of this poetaster.
+
+Flow, flow, my pen, as gently as sweet Afton ever flowed!
+An thou dost ill, shall this be still a poor thing, but mine ode.
+
+G. W., initial prex,
+  Right down in Wall Street, New York City,
+Took his first oath. Oh, multiplex
+  The whimsies quaint, the comments witty
+One might evolve from that! I scorn
+To mock the spot where he was sworn.
+
+On next Inauguration Day
+  He took the avouchment sempiternal
+Way down in Phil-a-delph-i-a,
+  Where rises now the L. H. Journal.
+His Farewell Speech in '96
+Said: "'Ware the Trusts and all their tricks!"
+
+John Adams fell on darksome days:
+  March Fourth was blustery and sleety;
+The French behaved in horrid ways
+  Until John Jay drew up a treaty.
+Came the Eleventh Amendment, too,
+Providing that--but why tell _you_?
+
+T. Jefferson, one history showed,
+  Held all display was vain and idle;
+Alone, unpanoplied, he rode;
+  Alone he hitched his horse's bridle.
+No ball that night, and no carouse,
+But back to Conrad's boarding house.
+
+He tied that bridle to the fence
+  The morning of inauguration;
+John Davis saw him do it; whence
+  Arose his "simple" reputation.
+The White House, though, with Thomas J.,
+Had chefs--and parties every day.
+
+
+THE MUSE INTERRUPTS THE ODIST
+
+If I were you I think I'd change my medium;
+  I weary of your meter and your style.
+The sameness of it sickens me to tedium;
+  I'll quit unless you switch it for a while.
+
+
+THE ODIST REPLIES
+
+I bow to thee, my Muse, most eloquent of pleaders;
+But why embarrass me in front of all these readers?
+
+Madison's inauguration
+Was a lovely celebration.
+In a suit of wool domestic
+Rode he, stately and majestic,
+Making it be manifest
+Clothes American are best.
+This has thundered through the ages.
+(See our advertising pages.)
+
+Lightly I pass along, and so
+Come to the terms of James Monroe
+Who framed the doctrine far too well
+Known for an odist to retell.
+His period of friendly dealing
+Began The Era of Good Feeling.
+
+John Quincy Adams followed him in Eighteen Twenty-four;
+Election was exciting--the details I shall ignore.
+But his inauguration as our country's President
+Was, take it from McMaster, some considerable event.
+It was a brilliant function, and I think I ought to add
+The Philadelphia "Ledger" said a gorgeous time was had.
+
+Old Andrew Jackson's pair of terms were terribly exciting;
+That stern, intrepid warrior had little else than fighting.
+A time of strife and turbulence, of politics and flurry.
+But deadly dull for poem themes, so, Mawruss, I should worry!
+
+In Washington did Martin Van
+  A stately custom then decree:
+Old Hickory, the veteran,
+Must ride with him, the people's man,
+  For all the world to see.
+A pleasant custom, in a way,
+  And yet I should have laughed
+To see the Sage of Oyster Bay
+  On Tuesday ride with Taft.
+(Pardon me this
+  Parenthetical halt:
+That sight you'll miss,
+  But it isn't my fault.)
+
+William Henry Harrison came
+  Riding a horse of alabaster,
+But the weather that day was a sin and a shame,
+  Take it from me and John McMaster.
+Only a month--and Harrison died,
+And V.-P. Tyler began preside.
+A far from popular prex was he,
+And the next one was Polk of Tennessee.
+There were two inaugural balls for him,
+But the rest of his record is rather dim.
+
+Had I the pen of a Pope or a Thackeray,
+  Had I the wisdom of Hegel or Kant,
+Then might I sing as I'd like to of Zachary,
+  Then might I sing a Taylorian chant.
+Oh, for the lyrical art of a Tennyson!
+  Oh, for the skill of Macaulay or Burke!
+None of these mine; so I give him my benison,
+  Turning reluctantly back to my work.
+
+O Millard Fillmore! when a man refers
+To thee, what direful, awful thing occurs?
+Though in itself thy name hath nought of wit,
+Yet--and this doth confound me to admit
+When I do hear it, I do smile; nay, more--
+I laugh, I scream, I cachinnate, I roar
+As Wearied Business Men do shake with glee
+At mimes that say "Dubuque" or "Kankakee";
+As basement-brows that laugh at New Rochelle;
+As lackwits laugh when actors mention Hell.
+Perhaps--it may be so--I am not sure--
+Perhaps it is that thou wast so obscure,
+And that one seldom hears a single word of thee;
+I know a lot of girls that never heard of thee.
+Hence did I smile, perhaps.... How very near
+The careless laughing to the thoughtful tear!
+O Fillmore, let me sheathe my mocking pen.
+God rest thee! I'll not laugh at thee again!
+
+I have heard it remarked that to Pierce's election
+There wasn't a soul had the slightest objection.
+I have also been told, by some caustical wit,
+That no one said nay when he wanted to quit.
+    Yet Franklin Pierce, forgotten man,
+      I celebrate your fame.
+    I'm doing just the best I can
+      To keep alive your name,
+    Though as a President, F. P.,
+    You didn't do as much for me.
+
+Of James Buchanan things a score
+  I might recite. I'll say that he was
+The only White House bachelor--
+  The only one, that's what J. B. was.
+      For he was a bachelor--
+    For he might have been a bigamist,
+    A Mormon, a polygamist,
+      And had thirty wives or more;
+    But this be his memorial:
+    He was ever unuxorial,
+      And remained a bachelor--
+      He re-mai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ained a bachelor.
+
+Lincoln! I falter, feeling it to be
+As if all words of mine in praise of him
+Were as the veriest dolt that saw the sun;
+And God had spoken him and said to him:
+"I bid you tell me what you think of it."
+And he should answer: "Oh, the sun is nice."
+So sadly fitted I to speak in praise
+Of Lincoln.
+
+Now during Andrew Johnson's term the currency grew stable;
+We bought Alaska and we laid the great Atlantic cable;
+And then there came eight years of Grant; thereafter four of Hayes;
+And in his time the parties fell on fierce and parlous days;
+And Garfield came, and Arthur too, and Congress shoes were worn,
+And Brooklyn Bridge was built, and I, your gifted bard, was born.
+
+Cleveland and Harrison came along then;
+Followed an era of Cleveland again.
+Came then McKinley and--light me a pipe--
+Hey, there, composing room, get some new type!
+
+_I sing him now as I shall sing him again;
+  I sing him now as I have sung before.
+How fluently his name comes off my pen!
+                O Theodore!_
+
+_Bless you and keep you, T. R.!
+  Energy tireless, eternal,
+Fixed and particular star,
+  Theodore, Teddy, the Colonel._
+
+_Energy tireless, eternal;
+  Hater of grafters and crooks!
+Theodore, Teddy, the Colonel,
+  Writer and lover of books,_
+
+_Hater of grafters and crooks,
+  Forceful, adroit, and expressive,
+Writer and lover of books,
+  Nevertheless a Progressive._
+
+_Forceful, adroit, and expressive,
+  Often asserting the trite;
+Nevertheless a Progressive;
+  Errant, but generally right._
+
+_Often asserting the trite;
+  Stubborn, and no one can force you.
+Errant, but generally right--
+  Yet, on the whole, I indorse you._
+
+_Stubborn, and no one can force you,
+  Fixed and particular star,
+Yet, on the whole, I indorse you,
+  Bless you and keep you, T. R.!_
+
+It blew, it rained, it snowed, it stormed, it froze, it hailed, it
+  sleeted
+The day that William Howard Taft upon the chair was seated.
+The four long years that followed--ah, that I should make a rime of it!
+For Mr. Taft assures me that he had an awful time of it.
+And yet meseems he did his best; and as we bid good-bye,
+I'll add he did a better job than you'd have done--or I.
+
+  Welcome to thee! I shake thy hand,
+  New prexy of our well-known land.
+  May what we merit, and no less,
+  Descend to give us happiness!
+  May what we merit, and no more,
+  Descend on us in measured store!
+  Give us but peace when we shall earn
+  The right to such a rich return!
+  Give us but plenty when we show
+  That we deserve to have it so!
+
+Mine ode is finished! Tut! It is a slight one,
+  But blame me not; I do as I am bid.
+The editor of COLLIER'S said to write one--
+                And I did.
+
+
+
+
+What the Copy Desk Might
+Have Done to:
+
+("Annabel Lee")
+
+=SOUL BRIDE ODDLY DEAD
+IN QUEER DEATH PACT=
+
+=High-Born Kinsman Abducts
+Girl from Poet-Lover--Flu
+Said to Be Cause of Death--Grand
+Jury to Probe=
+
+
+Annabel L. Poe, of 1834-1/2 3rd
+Av., the beautiful young fiancee
+of Edmund Allyn Poe, a magazine
+writer from the South, was found
+dead early this morning on the beach
+off E. 8th St.
+
+Poe seemed prostrated and, questioned
+by the police, said that one of her aristocratic
+relatives had taken her to the
+"seashore," but that the cold winds had
+given her "flu," from which she never
+"rallied."
+
+Detectives at work on the case believe,
+they say, that there was a suicide compact
+between the Poes and that Poe
+also intended to do away with himself.
+
+He refused to leave the spot where the
+woman's body had been found.
+
+
+
+
+("Curfew Must Not Ring To-night")
+
+=GIRL, HUMAN BELL-CLAPPER,
+SAVES DOOMED LOVER'S LIFE=
+
+=BRAVE ACT Of "BESSIE" SMITH
+HALTS CURFEW FROM RINGING
+AND MELTS CROMWELL'S
+HEART=
+
+(By Cable to _The Courier_)
+
+
+HUDDERSFIELD, KENT, ENGLAND.--Jan.
+15.--Swinging far out
+above the city, "Bessie" Smith, the
+young and beautiful fiancee of Basil
+Underwood, a prisoner incarcerated in
+the town jail, saved his life to-night.
+
+The woman went to "Jack" Hemingway,
+sexton of the First M. E. Church,
+and asked him to refrain from ringing
+the curfew bell last night, as Underwood's
+execution had been set for the
+hour when the bell was to ring. Hemingway
+refused, alleging it to be his
+duty to ring the bell.
+
+With a quick step Miss Smith bounded
+forward, sprang within the old church
+door, left the old man threading slowly
+paths which previously he had trodden,
+and mounted up to the tower. Climbing
+the dusty ladder in the dark, she is said
+to have whispered:
+
+"Curfew is not to ring this evening."
+
+Seizing the heavy tongue of the bell,
+as it was about to move, she swung far
+out suspended in mid-air, oscillating,
+thus preventing the bell from ringing.
+Hemingway's deafness prevented him
+from hearing the bell ring, but as he
+had been deaf for 20 years, he attributed
+no importance to the silence.
+
+As Miss Smith descended, she met
+Oliver Cromwell, the well-known lord
+protector, who had condemned Underwood
+to death. Hearing her story and
+noting her hands, bruised and torn, he
+said in part: "Go, your lover lives.
+Curfew shall not ring this evening."
+
+
+
+
+("The Ballad of the Tempest")
+
+=TOT'S FEW WORDS
+KEEP 117 SOULS
+FROM DIRE PANIC=
+
+=Babe's Query to Parent Saves Storm-Flayed
+Ship's Passengers Crowded
+in Cabin=
+
+FEARFUL THING IN WINTER
+
+
+BOSTON, MASS, Jan. 17--Cheered
+by the faith of little
+"Jennie" Carpenter, the 7-year-old
+daughter of Capt. B. L. Carpenter,
+of a steamer whose name could not be
+learned, 117 passengers on board were
+brought through panic early this morning
+while the storm was at its height,
+to shore.
+
+George H. Nebich, one of the passengers,
+told the following story to a
+COURIER reporter:
+
+"About midnight we were crowded in
+the cabin, afraid to sleep on account of
+the storm. All were praying, as Capt.
+Carpenter, staggering down the stairs,
+cried: 'We are lost!' It was then that
+little 'Jennie,' his daughter, took him
+by his hand and asked him whether he
+did not believe in divine omnipresence.
+All the passengers kissed the little
+'girlie' whose faith had so inspirited
+us."
+
+The steamer, it was said at the office
+of the company owning her, would leave
+as usual to-night for Portland.
+
+
+
+
+("Plain Language from Truthful James")
+
+=AH SIN, FAMED TONG MAN,
+BESTS BARD AT CARD TILT=
+
+="Celestial" Gambler, Feigning Ignorance
+of Euchre, Tricks Francis
+Bret Harte and "Bill" Nye
+into Heavy Losses--Solons
+to Probe Ochre Peril=
+
+
+SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3.--Francis
+B. Harte and E. W. Nye, a pair of local
+magazine writers, lost what is believed
+to be a large sum of money in a game
+of euchre played near the Bar-M mine
+this afternoon.
+
+There had been, Harte alleged, a
+three-handed game of euchre participated
+in by Nye, a Chinaman named Ah
+Sin and himself. The Chinaman, Harte
+asserted, did not understand the game,
+but, Harte declared, smiled as he sat by
+the table with what Harte termed was
+a "smile that was childlike and bland."
+
+Harte said that his feelings were
+shocked by the chicanery of Nye, but
+that the hands held by Ah Sin were
+unusual. Nye, maddened by the Chinaman's
+trickery, rushed at him, 24 packs
+of cards spilling from the tong-man's
+long sleeves. On his taper nails was
+found some wax.
+
+The "Mongolian," Harte said, is peculiar.
+
+Harte and Nye are thought to have
+lost a vast sum of money, as they are
+wealthy authors.
+
+The legislature, it is said, will investigate
+the question of the menace to
+American card-players by the so-called
+Yellow peril.
+
+
+
+
+("Excelsior")
+
+=DOG FINDS LAD
+DEAD IN DRIFT=
+
+=Unidentified Body of Young Traveler
+Found by Faithful Hound Near
+Small Alpine Village--White
+Mantle His Snowy Shroud=
+
+
+ST. BERNARD, Sept. 12.--Early
+this morning a dog belonging to the St.
+Bernard Monastery discovered the body
+of a young man, half buried in the
+snow.
+
+In his hand was clutched a flag with
+the word "Excelsior" printed on it.
+
+It is thought that he passed through
+the village last night, bearing the banner,
+and that a young woman had offered
+him shelter, which he refused,
+having answered "Excelsior."
+
+The police are working on the case.
+
+
+
+
+("The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers")
+
+=PILGRIM DADS
+LAND ON MASS.
+COAST TOWN=
+
+=Intrepid Band of Britons, Seeking
+Faith's Pure Shrine, Reach
+Rock-Bound Coast, Singing
+Amid Storm=
+
+
+PROVINCETOWN, MASS,
+Dec. 21--Poking her nose
+through the fog, the ship _Mayflower_,
+of Southampton, Jones, Master, limped
+into port to-night.
+
+On board were men with hoary hair
+and women with fearless eyes, 109 in
+all.
+
+Asked why they had made the journey,
+they alleged that religious freedom
+was the goal they sought here.
+
+The _Mayflower_ carried a cargo of antique
+furniture.
+
+Among those on board were William
+Bradford, M. Standish, Jno. Alden,
+Peregrine White, John Carver and
+others.
+
+Steps are being taken to organize a
+society of Mayflower Descendants.
+
+
+
+
+("The Bridge Of Sighs")
+
+=KINLESS YOUNG
+WOMAN, WEARY,
+TAKES OWN LIFE=
+
+=Body of Girl Found in River
+Tells Pitiful Story of
+Homelessness and Lack of
+Charity=
+
+
+LONDON, March 16.--The body of a
+young woman, her garments clinging
+like cerements, was found in the river
+late this afternoon.
+
+In the entire city she had no home.
+There are, according to the police, no
+relatives.
+
+The woman was young and slender
+and had auburn hair.
+
+No cause has been assigned for the
+act.
+
+
+
+
+Song of Synthetic Virility
+
+
+Oh, some may sing of the surging sea, or chant of the raging main;
+Or tell of the taffrail blown away by the raging hurricane.
+With an oh, for the feel of the salt sea spray as it stipples the
+  guffy's cheek!
+And oh, for the sob of the creaking mast and the halyard's aching
+  squeak!
+And some may sing of the galley-foist, and some of the quadrireme,
+And some of the day the xebec came and hit us abaft the beam.
+Oh, some may sing of the girl in Kew that died for a sailor's love,
+And some may sing of the surging sea, as I may have observed above.
+
+Oh, some may long for the Open Road, or crave for the prairie breeze,
+And some, o'ersick of the city's strain, may yearn for the whispering
+  trees.
+With an oh, for the rain to cool my face, and the wind to blow my hair!
+And oh, for the trail to Joyous Garde, where I may find my fair!
+And some may love to lie in the field in the stark and silent night,
+The glistering dew for a coverlet and the moon and stars for light.
+Let others sing of the soughing pines and the winds that rustle and
+  roar,
+And others long for the Open Road, as I may have remarked before.
+
+Ay, some may sing of the bursting bomb and the screech of a screaming
+  shell,
+Or tell the tale of the cruel trench on the other side of hell.
+And some may talk of the ten-mile hike in the dead of a winter night,
+And others chaunt of the doughtie Kyng with mickle valour dight.
+And some may long for the song of a child and the lullaby's fairy charm,
+And others yearn for the crack of the bat and the wind of the
+  pitcher's arm.
+Oh, some have longed for this and that, and others have craved and
+  yearned;
+And they all may sing of whatever they like, as far as I'm concerned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+
+Original variations in spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation have
+been retained.
+
+Bold text is surrounded by =.
+
+Italic text is surrounded by _.
+
+Page 71: The oe in Croesus was originally printed as a ligature.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Something Else Again, by Franklin P. Adams
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