| |
| SHALL I, lying in a grot, | |
| Die because the day is hot? | |
| Or declare I can’t endure | |
| Such a torrid temperature? | |
| Be it hotter than the flames | 5 |
| South Gehenna Junction claims, | |
| If it be not so to me, | |
| What care I how hot it be? | |
| |
| Shall I say I love the town | |
| Praised by Robinson and Browne? | 10 |
| Shall I say, “In Summer heat | |
| Old Manhattan can’t be beat”? | |
| Be it luring as a bar, | |
| Or my neighbor’s motor-car, | |
| If I think it is pazziz | 15 |
| What care I how fine it is? | |
| |
| Shall I prate of rural joys | |
| Far from civic smoke and noise? | |
| Shall I, like the others, drool | |
| “But the nights are always cool”? | 20 |
| If I hate to rise at six | |
| Shall I praise the suburbs? Nix! | |
| If the country’s not for me, | |
| What care I how good it be? | |
| |
| Town or country, cool or hot, | 25 |
| Differs nothing, matters not; | |
| For to quote that Roman cuss, | |
| Why dispute “de gustibus”? | |
| If to this or that one should | |
| Take a fancy, it is good. | 30 |
| If these rhymes look good to me, | |
| What care I how bad they be? | |
| |
