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PART I
I’M out to find the new, the modern school, | |
| Where Science trains the fledgling bard to fly, | |
| Where critics teach the ignorant, the fool, | |
| To write the stuff the editors would buy; | |
| It matters not e’en tho it be a lie,— | 5 |
| Just so it aims to smash tradition’s crown | |
| And build up one instead decked with a new renown. | |
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| A thought is haunting me by night and day, | |
| And in some safe archive I seek to lay it; | |
| I have some startling thing I wish to say, | 10 |
| And they can put me wise just how to say it. | |
| Without their aid, I, like the ass, must bray it, | |
| Without due knowledge of its mood and tense, | |
| And so ’tis sure to fail the bard to recompense. | |
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| Will some kind one direct me to that college | 15 |
| Where every budding genius now is headed, | |
| The only source to gain poetic knowledge, | |
| Where all the sacred truths lay deep imbedded, | |
| Where nothing but the genuine goods are shredded,— | |
| The factory where they shape new feet and meters | 20 |
| That make poetic symbols sound like carpet beaters. | |
| |
| I hope I’ll be an eligible student, | |
| E’en tho I am no poet in a sense, | |
| But just a hot-head youth with ways imprudent,— | |
| A rustic ranting rhymer like by chance | 25 |
| Who thinks that he can make the muses dance | |
| By beating on some poet’s borrowed lyre, | |
| To win some fool’s applause and please his own desire. | |
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| Perhaps they’ll never know or e’en suspect | |
| That I am not a true, a genuine poet; | 30 |
| If in the poet’s colors I am decked | |
| They may not ask me e’er to prove or show it. | |
| I’ll play the wise old cock, nor try to crow it, | |
| But be content to gaze with open mind; | |
| I’ll never show the lead but eye things from behind. | 35 |
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PART II
I have a problem all alone to solve, | |
| A problem how to find the poetry club, | |
| It makes my sky piece like a top revolve, | |
| For fear that they might mark me for a snob. | |
| They’ll call me poetry monger and then dub | 40 |
| Me rustic rhymer, anything they choose, | |
| Ay, anything at all, but heaven’s immortal muse. | |
| |
| Great Byron, when he published his Childe book, | |
| In which he sang of all his lovely dears, | |
| Called forth hot condemnation and cold look, | 45 |
| From lesser mortals who were not his peers. | |
| They chided him for telling his affairs, | |
| Because they could not tell their own so well, | |
| They plagued the poet lord and made his life a hell. | |
| |
| They called him lewd, vile drunkard, vicious wight, | 50 |
| And all because he dared to tell the truth, | |
| Because he was no cursed hermaphrodite,— | |
| A full fledged genius with the fire of youth. | |
| They hounded him, they hammered him forsooth; | |
| Because he blended human with divine, | 55 |
| They branded him “the bard of women and of wine.” | |
| |
| Of course I soak the booze once in a while, | |
| But I don’t wake the town to sing and shout it; | |
| I love the girls, they win me with a smile, | |
| But no one knows, for I won’t write about it. | 60 |
| And so the fools may never think to doubt it, | |
| When I declare I am a moral man, | |
| As gifted, yet as good as God did ever plan. | |
| |
| Every man has got a hobby, | |
| Every poet has some fault, | 65 |
| Every sweet contains its bitter, | |
| Every fresh thing has its salt. | |
| |
| Every mountain has a valley, | |
| Every valley has a hill, | |
| Every ravine is a river, | 70 |
| Every river is a rill. | |
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| Every fool has got some wisdom, | |
| Every wise man is a fool, | |
| Every scholar is a block-head, | |
| Every dunce has been to school. | 75 |
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| Every bad man is a good man, | |
| Every fat man is not stout, | |
| Every good man is a bad man | |
| But ’tis hard to find him out. | |
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| Every strong man is a weak man, | 80 |
| You may doubt it as you please, | |
| Every well man is a sick man, | |
| Every doctor has disease. | |
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