Impertinent Poems

Excerpt

DEAD MEN'S DUST.

You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.)
Why?
You cannot afford it? Bosh! you spend
Editions de luxeon a thirsty friend.
You can buy any one of the poetry bunch
For the price you pay for a business lunch.
Don't you suppose that a hungry head,
Like an empty stomach, ought to be fed?
Looking into myself, I find this true,
So I hardly can figure it false in you.
And you don'treadpoetry very much.
(Such
Is my own case also.) "But," you cry,
"I haven't the time." Beloved, you lie.
When a scandal happens in Buffalo,
You ponder the details, con and pro;
If poets were pugilists, couldn't you tell
Which of the poets licked John L.?
If poets were counts, could your wife be fooled
As to which of the poets married a Gould?
And evenmybooks might have some hope
If poetry books were books of dope.
"You're a little bit swift," you say to me,
"See!"
You open your library. There you show
Your "favorite poets," row on row,
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe,
A Homer unread, an uncut Horace,
A wholly forgotten William Morris.
My friend, my friend, can it be you thought
That these were poets whom you had bought?
These are dead men's bones. You bought their mummies
To display your style, like clothing dummies.
But when do they talk to you? Some one said
That these were poets which should be read,
So here they stand. But tell me, pray,
How many poets who live to-day
Have you, of your own volition, sought,
Discovered and tested, proved andbought,
With a grateful glow that the dollar you spent
Netted the poet his ten per cent.?
"But hold on," you say, "I am readingyou."
True,
And pitying, too, the sorry end
Of the dog I tried this on. My friend,
Icanwrite poetry—good enough
So you wouldn't look at the worthy stuff.
But knowing what you prefer to read
I'm setting the pace at about your speed,
Being rather convinced these truths will hold you
A little bit better than if I'd told you
A genuine poem and forgotten to scold you.
Besides, when I open my little room
And seemypoets, each in his tomb,
With his mouth dust-stopped, I turn from the shelf
And I must scold you, or scold myself.

Thomas Moore, at the present date,
Is chiefly known as "a ten-cent straight."
Walter, the Scot, is forgiven his rimes
Because of his tales of stirring times.
William Morris's fame will wear
As a practical man who made a chair.
And even Shakespere's memory's green
Less because he's read than because he's seen.
Then why should a poet make his bow
In the year of nineteen hundred and now?
Homer himself, if he could but speak,
Would admit that most of his stuff is Greek.
Chaucer would no doubt own his tongue
Was the broken speech of the land when young.
Shelley's a sealed-up book, and Byron
Is chiefly recalled as a masculine siren.
Poe has a perch on the chamber door,
But the populace read him "Nevermore."
Spenser fitted his day, as all allow,
But this is nineteen hundred and now.
Tennyson's chiefly given away
To callow girls on commencement day....