CONTENTS
Us Poets
Rubber-Stamp Humour
The Simple Stuff
"Carpe Diem" or Cop The Day
That for Money!
Xanthias Jollied
Horace the Wise
Jealousy
To Be Quite Frank
R. S. V. P.
Advice
When Horace "Came Back"
Nix on the Fluffy Stuff
Catullus, Considerable Kisser
V. Catullus Explains
The Rich Man
To-night
Those Two Boys
Help! The Passionate Householder to His Love
The Servants
Our Dum'd Animals
A Soft Susurrus
A Summer Summary
A Quatrain
To a Light Housekeeper
How?
Ballade of the Breakfast Table
Ornithology
To Alice-Sit-By-the-Hour
To Alice-Sit-By-the-Hour (Second Idyl)
Notions
My Ladye's Eyen
To a Lady
"A Perfect Woman Nobly Planned"
An Ultimatum to Myrtilla
Love Gustatory
She Is Not Fair
To Myrtilla, Again
Myrtilla's Third Degree
To Myrtilla Complaining
Christmas Cards - To the Grocery Boy
To the Janitor
To the Waiter
To the Apartment House Telephone Girl
To the Barber
To the Hall and Elevator Boy
Ballade of a Hardy Annual
A Plea
Footlight Motifs—Mrs. Fiske
Footlight Motifs—Olga Nethersole
Ballade of the Average Reader
Poesy's Guerdon
Signal Service
Sporadic Fiction
Popular Ballad; "Never Forget Your Parents"
Ballade to a Lady (To Annabelle)
To a Thesaurus
The Ancient Lays
Erring in Company
The Limit
Chorus for Mixed Voices
The Translated Way
"And Yet It Is a Gentle Art."
Occasionally
Jim and Bill
When Nobody Listens
Office Mottoes
Metaphysics
Heads and Tails
An Election Night Pantoum
I Can Not Pay That Premium
Three Authors
To Quotation
Melodrama
A Poor Excuse, but Our Own
Monotonous Variety
The Amateur Botanist
A Word for It
The Poem Speaks
Bedbooks
A New York Child's Garden of Verses
Downward, Come Downward
Speaking of Hunting
The Flat Hunter's Way
Birds and Bards
A Wish—An Apartmental Ditty
The Monument of Q. H. F.
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 Shelley;
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 prone 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 gods 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. SALLUSTIUM CRISPUM
Horace: Book II, Ode 2
"Nellus argento color est avaris."
Sallust, I know you of old,
How you hate the sight of gold—
"Idle ingots that encumber
Mother Earth"—I've got your number.
Why is Proculeius known
From Elmira to Malone?
For his money? Don't upset me!
For his love of folks—you get me?
Choke the Rockefeller yen
For the clink of iron men!
Happiness it will not mint us,
Take it from your Uncle Quintus.
Fancy food and wealthy drink
Raise Gehenna with a gink;
Pastry, terrapin, and cheeses
Bring on gout and swell diseases.
Phraates upon the throne
Old King Cyrus used to own
Fails to hoodwink or deceive me,
Cyrus was some king, believe me!
Get me right: a man's-size prince
Knows that money is a quince.
When they see the Yellow Taffy,
Reg'lar Princes don't go daffy.
Xanthias Jollied
AD XANTHIAM PHOCEUM
Horace: Book II, Ode 4.
"Ne sit ancillae tibi amor pudori."
Nay, Xanthias, feel unashamed
That she you love is but a servant.
Remember, lovers far more famed
Were just as fervent.
Achilles loved the pretty slave
Briseis for her fair complexion;
And to Tecmessa Ajax gave
His young affection.
Why, Agamemnon at the height
Of feasting, triumph, and anointment,
Left everything to keep, one night,
A small appointment.
And are you sure the girl you love—
This maid on whom you have your heart set
Is lowly—that she is not of
The Roman smart set?
A maiden modest as is she,
So full of sweetness and forbearance,
Must be all right; her folks must be
Delightful parents.
Her arms and face I can commend,
And, as the writer of a poem,
I fain would compliment, old friend,
The limbs below 'em.
Nay, be not jealous. Stop your fears.
My tendencies are far from sporty.
Besides, the number of my years
Is over forty.
Horace the Wise
AD PYRRHAM
Horace: Book I, Ode 5.
"Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa"
What lady-like youth in his wild aberrations
Is putting cologne on his brow?
For whom are the puffs and the blond transformations?
I wonder who's kissing you now.
[Footnote: Paraphraser's note: Horace beat the modern song
writers to this. The translation is literal
enough—"Quis…gracilis te puer…urget?".]
Tee hee! I must laugh when I think of his finish,
Not wise to your ways and your rep.
Ha! ha! how his fancy for you will diminish!
I know, for I'm Jonathan Hep.
Jealousy
AD LYDIAM
Horace: Book I., Ode 13.
"Quem tu, Lydia, Telephi Cervicem roseam, cerea Telephi—"
What time thou yearnest for the arms
Of Telephus, I fain would twist 'em;
When thou dost praise his other charms
It just upsets my well-known system;
My brain is like a three-ring circus,
In short, it gets my capra hircus.
My reason reels, my cheeks grow pale,
My heart becomes unduly spiteful,
My verses in the Evening Mail
Are far from snappy and delightful.
I put a civil question, Lyddy:
Is that a way to treat one's stiddy?
What mean those marks upon thee, girl?
Those prints of brutal osculation?
Great grief! that lowlife and that churl!
That Telephus abomination!
Can him, O votary of Venus,
Else everything is off between us.
O triply beatific those
Whose state is classified as married,
Untroubled by the green-eyed woes,
By such upheavals never harried.
Ay, three times happy are the wed ones,
Who cleave together till they're dead ones.
To Be Quite Frank
IN CHLORIN
Horace: Book III, Ode 15.
"Uxor pauperis Ibyci—"
Your conduct, naughty Chloris, is
Not just exactly Horace's
Ideal of a lady
At the shady
Time of life;
You mustn't throw your soul away
On foolishness, like Pholoe—
Her days are folly-laden—
She's a maiden,
You're a wife.
Your daughter, with propriety,
May look for male society,
Do one thing and another
In which mother
Shouldn't mix;
But revels Bacchanalian
Are—or should be—quite alien
To you a married person,
Something worse'n
Forty-six!
Yes, Chloris, you cut up too much,
You love the dance and cup too much,
Your years are quickly flitting—
To your knitting,
Right about!
Forget the incidental things
That keep you from parental things—
The World, the Flesh, the Devil,
On the level,
Cut 'em out!