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Tobogganing On Parna.s.sus.
by Franklin P. Adams.
TO
BERT LESTON TAYLOR
GUIDE, PHILOSOPHER, BUT FRIEND
_If that these vagrant verses make One heart more glad; if they but bring A single smile, for that One's sake I should be satisfied to sing.
As Locker said, in phrasing fitter, Pleased if but One should like the twitter.
If I have eased one heart of pain; If I have made one throb or thrill; My labour has not been in vain.
My work has not been all for nil, If only One, from Maine to Kansas, Shall say "I like his simple stanzas."
If but a solitary voice Should say "These verses polyglot Are not so bad," I should rejoice; But oh, my publishers would not!
And I, though shy and unanointed, Should be a little disappointed._
Us Poets
Wordsworth wrote some tawdry stuff; Much of Moore I have forgotten; Parts of Tennyson are guff; Bits of Byron, too, are rotten.
All of Browning isn't great; There are slipshod lines in Sh.e.l.ley; Every one knows Homer's fate; Some of Keats is vermicelli.
Sometimes Shakespeare hit the slide, Not to mention Pope or Milton; Some of Southey's stuff is snide.
Some of Spenser's simply Stilton.
When one has to boil the pot, One can't always watch the kittle.
You may credit it or not-- Now and then _I_ slump a little!
Rubber-Stamp Humour
If couples mated but for love; If women all were perfect cooks; If Hoosier authors wrote no books; If horses always won; If people in the flat above Were silent as the very grave; If foreign counts were p.r.o.ne to save; If tailors did not dun--
If automobiles always ran As advertised in catalogues; If tramps were not afraid of dogs; If servants never left; If comic songs would always scan; If Alfred Austin were sublime; If poetry would always rhyme; If authors all were deft--
If office boys were not all cranks On base-ball; if the selling price Of meat and coal and eggs and ice Would stop its mad increase; If women started saying "Thanks"
When men gave up their seats in cars; If there were none but good cigars, And better yet police--
If there were no such thing as booze; If wifey's mother never came To visit; if a foot-ball game Were mild and harmless sport; If all the Presidential news Were colourless; if there were men At every mountain, sea-side, glen, River and lake resort--
If every girl were fair of face; If women did not fear to get Their suits for so-called bathing wet-- If all these things were true, This earth would be a pleasant place.
But where would people get their laughs?
And whence would spring the paragraphs?
And what would jokers do?
The Simple Stuff
AD PUERUM
Horace: Book I, Ode 32.
"_Persicos odi, puer, apparatus_."
Nix on the Persian pretence!
Myrtle for Quintus H. Flaccus!
Wreaths of the linden tree, hence!
Nix on the Persian pretence!
Waiter, here's seventy cents-- Come, let me celebrate Bacchus!
Nix on the Persian pretence!
Myrtle for Quintus H. Flaccus.
"Carpe Diem," or Cop the Day
AD LEUCONOEN
Horace: Book I, Ode 13.
_"Tu ne quoesieris, scire nefas--"_
It is not right for you to know, so do not ask, Leuconoe, How long a life the G.o.ds may give or ever we are gone away; Try not to read the Final Page, the ending colophonian, Trust not the gypsy's tea-leaves, nor the prophets Babylonian.
Better to have what is to come enshrouded in obscurity Than to be certain of the sort and length of our futurity.
Why, even as I monologue on wisdom and longevity How Time has flown! Spear some of it!
The longest life is brevity.
That For Money!
AD C. SALl.u.s.tIUM CRISPUM
Horace: Book II, Ode 2
