Something Else Again Part 12

Lines Written on the Sunny Side of Frankfort Street

Sporting with Amaryllis in the shade, (I credit Milton in parenthesis), Among the speculations that she made Was this:

"When"--these her very words--"when you return, A slave to duty's harsh commanding call, Will you, I wonder, ever sigh and yearn At all?"

Doubt, honest doubt, sat then upon my brow.

(Emotion is a thing I do not plan.) I could not fairly answer then, but now I can.

Yes, Amaryllis, I can tell you this, Can answer publicly and unafraid: You haven't any notion how I miss The shade.

Fifty-Fifty

[We think about the feminine faces we meet in the streets, and experience a pa.s.sing melancholy because we are unacquainted with some of the girls we see.--From "The Erotic Motive in Literature," by ALBERT MORDELL.]

Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many girls I see Whose form and features I applaud With well-concealed glee!

I'd speak to many a sonsie maid, Or willowy or obese, Were I not fearful, and afraid She'd yell for the police.

And Melancholy, bittersweet, Marks me then as her own, Because I lack the nerve to greet The girls I might have known.

Yet though with sadness I am fraught, (As I remarked before), There is one sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er:

For every shadow cloud of woe Hath argentine alloy; I see some girls I do not know, And feel a pa.s.sing joy.

To Myrtilla

Twelve fleeting years ago, my Myrt, (_Eheu fugaces!_ maybe more) I wrote of the directoire skirt You wore.

Ten years ago, Myrtilla mine, The hobble skirt engaged my pen.

That was, I calculate, in Nine- Teen Ten.

The polo coat, the feathered lid, The phony furs of yesterfall, The current shoe--I tried to kid Them all.

Vain every vitriolic bit, Silly all my sulphuric song.

Rube Goldberg said a bookful; it 'S all wrong.

Bitter the words I used to fling, But you, despite my angriest Note, Were never swayed by anything I wrote.

So I surrender. I am beat.

And, though the admission rather girds, In any garb you're just too sweet For words.

A Psalm of Labouring Life

Tell me not, in doctored numbers, Life is but a name for work!

For the labour that enc.u.mbers Me I wish that I could s.h.i.+rk.

Life is phony! Life is rotten!

And the wealthy have no soul; Why should you be picking cotton?

Why should I be mining coal?

Not employment and not sorrow Is my destined end or way; But to act that each to-morrow Finds me idler than to-day.

Work is long, and plutes are lunching; Money is the thing I crave; But my heart continues punching Funeral time-clocks to the grave.

In the world's uneven battle, In the swindle known as life, Be not like the stockyards cattle-- Stick your partner with a knife!

Trust no Boss, however pleasant!

Capital is but a curse!

Strike,--strike in the living present!

Fill, oh fill, the bulging purse!

Lives of strikers all remind us We can make our lives a crime, And, departing, leave behind us Bills for double overtime.

Charges that, perhaps another, Working for a stingy ten Bucks a day, some mining brother Seeing, shall walk out again.

Let us, then, be up and striking, Discontent with all of it; Still undoing, still disliking, Learn to labour--and to quit.

Ballade of Ancient Acts

AFTER HENLEY

Where are the wheezes they essayed And where the smiles they made to flow?

Where's Caron's seltzer siphon laid, A squirt from which laid Herbert low?

Where's Charlie Case's comic woe And Georgie Cohan's nasal drawl?

The afterpiece? The olio?

Into the night go one and all.

Where are the j.a.peries, fresh or frayed, That Fields and Lewis used to throw?

Where is the horn that Shepherd played?

The slide trombone that Wood would blow?

Amelia Glover's l. f. toe?

The Rays and their domestic brawl?