A line-o'-verse or two Part 15

I think Felicia Hemans great, I dote upon Jean Ingelow; Yet quote from such a reprobate As Poe.

To quote from drunkard or from rake Is not a proper thing to do.

I find the habit hard to break, Don't you?

THE PERSISTENT POET

"I remember, I remember"-- Something special? Not a bit.

But, you see, this is November, And Remember rimes with it.

HENCE THESE RIMES

Tho' my verse is exact, Tho' it flawlessly flows, As a matter of fact I would rather write prose.

While my harp is in tune, And I sing like the birds, I would really as soon Write in straightaway words.

Tho' my songs are as sweet As Apollo e'er piped, And my lines are as neat As have ever been typed,

I would rather write prose-- I prefer it to rime; It's less hard to compose, And it takes me less time.

"Well, if that be the case,"

You are moved to inquire, "Why appropriate s.p.a.ce For extolling your lyre?"

I can only reply That this form I elect 'Cause it pleases the eye, And I like the effect.

THE OLD ROLLER TOWEL

How dear to this heart is the old roller towel Which fond recollection presents to my view.

It hung like a pall on the wall of the washroom, And gathered the grime of the linotype crew.

The sink and the soap and the lye that stood by it Remain; but the towel is gone past recall.

O tempora! Also, O mores! Sic transit The time-honored towel that creaked on the wall.

The grimy old towel, the slimy old towel, The tacky old towel that hung on the wall.

Now hangs in the washroom a huge roll of paper-- The old printer's towel we'll never see more.

The new (see directions) is "used like a blotter,"

And crumpled and scattered in wads on the floor.

And often, when drying my hands in this fas.h.i.+on, The tears of remembrance will gather and fall, And I sigh (though I'm not what you'd call sentimental) For the cla.s.sic old towel that propped up the wall.

The sainted old towel, the tainted old towel, The gooey old towel that hung on the wall.

UP CULTURE'S HILL

(_The confession of a club lady._)

The path up Culture's Hill is steep, And weary is the way, With very little time for sleep And none at all for play.

She that this toilsome task essays Must never bat an eye, But keep her firm, unwavering gaze Forever fixed on high.

For should she ever careless grow, And let her glances stray Down to the shallow vale below, Where Pleasure's Court holds sway--

Lured by the thrice forbidden fruit, She'd lose her equipoise, And like a wayward Pleiad shoot Down to forbidden joys.

I've been but short time on the road, My courage still is strong; Yet often have I felt the goad That hurries me along.

I've fallen over Maeterlinck, And b.u.mped myself to tears, Burne-Jones's pictures made me blink, And Wagner hurts my ears.

I've stumbled over Ibsen humps And over Rembrandt rocks, I've got some fierce Debussy b.u.mps, Some awful Nietsche knocks.

I'm wearied by the ceaseless quest, I'm wayworn and footsore.

I've Culture till I cannot rest-- Yet still I climb for more.

But oh, when all is done and said, Upon some manly breast I'd like to lay my tired head And take a good long rest.

THE Pa.s.sIONAL NOTE

"_The erotic motive is almost entirely absent from American poetry. Even our younger American poets are more profoundly interested in the why and wherefore of things than in the girdle of Helen or the gleaming limbs of 'the white implacable Aphrodite.'_"

--MR. SYLVESTER VIERECK.

In the years of my season erotic, When Eros was lord of my days, And I loved, with a love idiotic, The Mabels and Madges and Mays; When a purple and pa.s.sionate lyric Would sing all the night in my head,-- I yearned, like the young Mr. Viereck, For everything red.

I doted on poems of pa.s.sion, And put my own pantings in rime, To celebrate, after a fas.h.i.+on, The damsels who took up my time.

I fed upon Swinburne, believe me, I feasted on Byron and Burns, And couplets from Sappho would give me Most exquisite turns.

How apparent it was that our songbirds-- Our Emerson, Lowell, and Payne, And Bryant and Drake--were the wrong birds To pipe to the pa.s.sional strain.

There was, in a word, nothing doing In all of the rimes that they wrote; They seemed to be always pursuing The ethical note.

What truth, I inquired, was so mighty, What ethical thing was so rare, As the limbs of the white Aphrodite Or a strand of her heaven-kissed hair!

The girdle of red-headed Helen Outweighed all the wherefores and whys, And Wisdom elected to dwell in A pair of blue eyes.

_Now_ lyrical sizzlers and scorchers Fail somehow to set me ablaze; No longer are exquisite tortures Provoked by these pa.s.sionate lays.

I've tinned--and I can't say I've missed 'em-- The poems of pa.s.sion and sin.