R.S.V.P.
AD PHYLLIDEM
Horace: Book IV Ode II
"Est mihi nonum superantis annum"
Phyllis, I've a keg of fine fermented grape juice,
Alban wine that's been nine years in the cellar.
Ivy chaplets? Sure. Also, in the garden,
Plenty of parsley.
See my little shack—why, you'd hardly know it.
All the rooms are swept, Sunday-like and shiny;
Flowers all around, altar simply famished—
Hungry for lamb stew.
Neighbours all are coming over to the party,
All the busy boys, all the giggling girlies,
Whiffs of certain things wafted from the kitchen—
Simply delicious.
Oh, of course. You ask why the fancy fireworks,
Why the awning out, why the stylish doings.
Well, I'll tell you why. It's Maecenas' birthday
13th of April.
Telephus? Oh, tush! Pass him up completely!
Telly's such a swell; Telly doesn't love you;
Telly is a trifler; Telly's running round with
Some other fairy.
Phyllie, don't mismate; those that do regret it.
Phaeton—you know his unhappy story;
Poor Bellerophon, too, you must remember,
Pegasus shook him.
If these few remarks, rather aptly chosen,
Make a hit with you, come, don't make me jealous.
Let me sing you songs of my own composing,
Oh, come on over!
Advice
AD ARIUSTUM FUSCUM
I
Horace: Book I, Ode 22.
"Integer vitae sclerisque purus"—
Take it from me: A guy who's square,
His chances always are the best.
I'm in the know, for I've been there,
And that's no ancient Roman jest.
What time he hits the hay to rest
There's nothing on his mind but hair,
No javelin upon his chest—
Take it from me, a guy who's square.
There's nothing that can throw a scare
Into the contents of his vest;
His name is Eva I-Don't-Care;
His chances always are the best.
Why, once, when I was way out West,
Singing to Lalage, a bear
Came up, and I was some distressed—
I'm in the know, for I've been there.
But back he went into his lair,
(Cage, corner, den, retreat, nook, nest),
And left me to "The Maiden's Prayer"—
And that's no ancient Roman jest.
In Newtonville or Cedar Crest,
In Cincinnati or Eau Claire,
I'll warble till I am a pest,
"My Lalage"—no matter where—
Take it from me!
II
Fuscus, my friend, take it from me—
I know the world and what it's made of—
One on the square has naught to be
Afraid of.
The Moorish bows and javelins? Nope.
Such deadly things need not alarm him.
Why, even arrows dipped in dope
Can't harm him!
He's safe in any clime or land,
Desert or river, hill or valley;
Safe in all places on the Rand-
McNally.
Why, one day in my Sabine grot,
I sang for Lalage to hear me;
A wolf came in and he did not
Come near me!
Ah, set me on the sunless plain,
In China, Norway, or Matanzas,
Ay, place me anywhere from Maine
To Kansas.
Still of my Lalage I'll sing,
Where'er the Fates may chance to drop me;
And nobody nor anything
Shall stop me.
When Horace "Came Back"
CARMEN AMOEBAEUM
I
Horace: Book III, Ode 9.
"Donec gratus eram tibi—"
HORACE
When I was your stiddy, my loveliest Lyddy,
And you my embraceable she,
In joys and diversions, the king of the Persians
Had nothing on me.
LYDIA
When I was the person you penned all that verse on,
Ere Chloe had caused you to sigh,
Not she whose cognomen is Ilia the Roman
Was happier than I.
HORACE
Ah, Chloe the Thracian—whose sweet modulation
Of voice as she lilts to the lyre
Is sweeter and fairer? Would but the Fates spare her
I'd love to expire.
LYDIA
Tush! Calais claims me and wholly inflames me,
He pesters me never with rhymes;
If they should spare Cally, I'd perish to_tal_ly
A couple of times.
HORACE
Suppose my affection in Lyddy's direction
Returned; that I gave the good-by
To Chloe the golden, and back to the olden?—
I pause for reply.
LYDIA
Cheer up, mine ensnarer! Be Calais fairer
Than stars, be you blustery and base,
I'll love you, adore you; in brief, I am for you
All over the place.
II
HORACE
What time I was your one best bet
And no one passed the wire before me,
Dear Lyddy, I cannot forget
How you would—yes, you would—adore me.
To others you would tie the can;
You thought of me with no aversion.
In those days I was happier than
A Persian.
LYDIA
Correct. As long as you were not
So nuts about this Chloe person,
Your flame for me burned pretty hot—
Mine was the door you pinned your verse on.
Your favourite name began with L,
While I thought you surpassed by no man—
Gladder than Ilia, the well-
Known Roman.
HORACE
On Chloe? Yes, I've got a case;
Her voice is such a sweet soprano;
Her people come from Northern Thrace;
You ought to hear her play piano.
If she would like my suicide—
If she'd want me a dead and dumb thing,
Me for a glass of cyanide,
Or something.
LYDIA
Now Calais, the handsome son
Of old Ornitus, has me going;
He says I am his honey bun,
He's mine, however winds are blowing;
I think that he is awful nice,
And, if the gods the signal gave him,
I'd just as lieve die once or twice
To save him.
HORACE
Suppose I'm gone on you again,
Suppose I've got ingrown affection
For you; I sort of wonder, then,
If you'd have any great objection.
Suppose I pass this Chloe up
And say:"Go roll your hoop, I'm rid o' ye!"
Would that drop sweetness in your cup?
Eh, Lydia?
LYDIA
Why, say—though he's fair as a star,
And you are like a cork, erratic
And light—and though I know you are
As blustery as the Adriatic,
I think I'd rather live with you
Or die with you, I swear to gracious.
So I will be your Mrs. Q.
Horatius.
Nix On the Fluffy Stuff
AD CYNTHIAM
Propertius: Book I, Elegy 2.
"Quid iuvat ornato procedere, vita, capillo
Et tenues Coa veste movere sinus?"
Why, my love, the yellow trinkets
In your tresses' purer gold?
Why the Syrian perfume? Think it's
Nice to be thus aureoled?
Why the silken robes that rustle?
Why the pigment on the map?
Think you all that fume and fuss'll
Ever charm a chap?
Mother Earth is unaffected—
Is her beauty therefore less?
Is she gray or ill-complected?
I should call her some success.
Soft the murmur of the river,
Bright the shore that lines the sea—
Is the universe a flivver?
No, take it from me.
Castor loved the lady Phoebe
For no bought or borrowed wile;
Hillaira—wasn't she be-
Loved without excessive style?
Hippodamia slaved no fashions—
All that braver, elder time
Is replete with simple passions
Difficult to rhyme.
Nay, my Cynthia, sweet and smile-ish,
Take it from your own Propert,
Don't essay to be so stylish,
Don't attempt the harem skirt.
I am ever Yours Sincerely,
Past the shadow of a doubt,
Yours Forever, if you'll merely
Cut the frivol out.
Catullus, Considerable Kisser
(A Pasteurization of Ode VII.)
How many kisses, Lesbia, miss, you ask would
be enough for me?
I cannot sum the total number; nay, that were
too tough for me.
The sands that o'er Cyrene's shore lie sweetly
odoriferous,
The stars that sprent the firmament when
overly stelliferous—
Come, Lezzy, please add all of these, until the
whole amount of 'em
Will sorely vex the rubbernecks attempting
to keep count of 'em.
V. Catullus Explains
ODE LXXXV: AD LESBIAM
Hark thou, my Lesbia, there be none existent
Can truly say she hath been loved by me
As thou hast been. No faith is more consistent
Than that which V. Catullus gives to thee.
How reasonless the state of an emotion!
For wert thou faultless, perfect, and sublime,
I could not like thee; nor would my devotion
And love be less wert thou the Queen of Crime.
The Rich Man
The rich man has his motor-car,
His country and his town estate.
He smokes a fifty-cent cigar
And jeers at Fate.
He frivols through the livelong day,
He knows not Poverty her pinch.
His lot seems light, his heart seems gay,
He has a cinch.
Yet though my lamp burns low and dim,
Though I must slave for livelihood—
Think you that I would change with him?
You bet I would!
To-night
_
Love me to-night! Fold your dear arms around me—
Hurt me—I do but glory in your might!
Tho' your fierce strength absorb, engulf, and drown me,
Love me to-night!
The world's wild stress sounds less than our own heart-beat
Its puny nothingness sinks out of sight.
Just you and I and Love alone are left, sweet—
Love me to-night!
Love me to-night! I care not for to-morrow—
Look in my eyes, aglow with Love's own light:
Full soon enough will come daylight, and sorrow—
Love me to-night!
_
—BEATRICE M. BARRY, in the Banquet Table.
We can't to-night! We're overworked and busy;
We've got a lot of paragraphs to write;
Although your invitation drives us dizzy,
We can't to-night!
But, Trixie, we admit we're greatly smit with
The heart you picture—incandescent, white.
We must confess that you have made a hit with
Us here to-night.
O Beatrice! O Tempora! O Heaven!
List to our lyre the while the strings we smite;
Where shall you be at—well, say half-past seven
To-morrow night?
Those Two Boys
When Bill was a lad he was terribly bad.
He worried his parents a lot;
He'd lie and he'd swear and pull little girls' hair;
His boyhood was naught but a blot.
At play and in school he would fracture each rule—
In mischief from autumn to spring;
And the villagers knew when to manhood he grew
He would never amount to a thing.
When Jim was a child he was not very wild;
He was known as a good little boy;
He was honest and bright and the teacher's delight—
To his mother and father a joy.
All the neighbours were sure that his virtue'd endure,
That his life would be free of a spot;
They were certain that Jim had a great head on him
And that Jim would amount to a lot.
And Jim grew to manhood and honour and fame
And bears a good name;
While Bill is shut up in a dark prison cell—
You never can tell.
Help
The Passionate Householder to his Love
Come, live with us and be our cook,
And we will all the whimsies brook
That German, Irish, Swede, and Slav
And all the dear domestics have.
And you shall sit upon the stoop
What time we go and cook the soup,
And you shall hear, both night and day,
Melodious pianolas play.
And we will make the beds, of course,
You'll have two autos and a horse,
A lady to Marcel your tresses,
And all the madame's half-worn dresses.
Your gowns shall be of lace and silk,
Your laving shall be done in milk.
Two trained physicians when you cough,
And Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays off.
When you are mashing Irish spuds
You'll wear the very finest duds.
If good to you these prospects look,
Come, live with us and be our cook.
On callers we have put no stops,
We love the iceman and the cops,
And no alarm clock with its ticks
And bell to ring at half-past six.
O Gretchen, Bridget, Hulda, Mary,
Come, be our genius culinary.
If good to you these prospects look,
Come, live with us and be our cook.
The Servants
With genuflexions to Kipling's "The Ladies"
We've taken our cooks where we've found 'em;
We've answered many an ad;
We've had our pickin' o' servants,
And most of the lot was bad.
Some was Norahs an' Bridgets;
Tillie she came last fall;
Claras and Fannies and Lenas and Annies,
And now we've got none at all.
Now, we don't know much about servants,
For, takin' 'em all along,
You never can tell till you've tried 'em,
And then you are like to be wrong.
There's times when you'll think that they're perfect;
There's times when you'll think that they're bum,
But the things you'll learn from those that have gone
May help you with those to come.
Norah, she landed from Dublin,
Green as acushla machree;
Norah was willing and anxious
To learn what a servant should be.
We told Mrs. Kirk all about her—
She offered her seven more per—
Now Norah she works, as you know, for the Kirks—
And we learned about servants from her.
Lena we got from an "office";
Lena was saving and Dutch—
Thought that our bills were enormous,
And told us we spent far too much.
Lena decamped with some silver,
Jewelry, laces and fur—
She was loving and kind, with a Socialist mind—
And we learned about servants from her.
Tillie blew in from the Indies,
Black as the middle of night—
Cooked like a regular Savarin—
Kitchen was shiny an' bright.
Everything ran along lovely
Until—it was bound to occur—
She ran away with a porter one day—
But we learned about servants from her.
We've taken our cooks where we've found them,
Yellow and black and white;
Some was better than others,
But none of the lot was right.
And the end of it's only worry
And trouble and bother and fuss—
When you answer an ad., think of those we have had
And learn about servants from us.
Our Dum'd Animals
What time I seek my virtuous couch to steal
Some surcease from the labours of the day,
Ere silence like a poultice comes to heal—
In short, when I prepare to hit the hay;
Ere slumber's chains (I quote from Moore) have bound me,
I hear a lot of noises all around me.
Time was when falling off the well-known log
Were harder far than falling off to sleep;
But that was ere my neighbour's gentle dog
Began to think he was defending sheep.
From twelve to two his barking and his howling
Accompanies two torn cats' nightly yowling.
At two-ten sharp the parrot in the flat
Across the way his monologue essays.
At three, again, as Gilbert says, the cat;
At four a milkman's horse, exulted, neighs.
At six-fifteen, nor does it ever vary,
I hear the dulcet tones of a canary.
Each living thing I love; I love the birds;
The beasts in field and forest, too, I love,
But I have writ these poor, if metric words,
To query which, by all the pow'rs above,
Of all the animals—pray tell me, some one—
Is called by any courtesy a dumb one?
A Soft Susurrus
A soft susurrus in the night,
A song whose singer is unseen—
'Twere poetry itself to write
"A soft susurrus in the night!"
I know, as those mosquitos bite,
That I forgot to fix that screen,
"A soft susurrus in the night!"
A song whose singer is unseen.
A Summer Summary
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
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?
Shall I say, "In summer heat
Old Manhattan can't be beat?"
Be it luring as a bar,
Or my neighbour's motor-car,
If I think it is pazziz
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?"
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,
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.
If these rhymes look good to me,
What care I how bad they be?
A Quatrain
A quatrain fills a little space,
Although it's pretty small,
And oftentimes, as in this case,
It has no point at all.
To a Light Housekeeper
(Who hitches laundering articles to the curtain string and pastes them on the pane.)
Lady, thou that livest
Just across the way,
If a hang thou givest
What the people say,
If a cuss thou carest
What a poet thinks—
Hearken, if thou darest,
Most immodest minx!
Though thy gloves thou tiest,
To the curtain string,
Though the things thou driest
Gird me while I sing,
Hankies and inventions
Of the lacy tribe—
Things I may not mention,
Let alone describe.
These I mutely stand for
Though the sight offend,
THIS I reprimand for;
Take it from a friend:
Cease to pin thy tresses
To the window sill,
Or I'll tell the presses—
Honestly, I will.
How?
How can I work when you play the piano,
Feminine person above?
How can I think, with your ceaseless soprano
Singing: "Ah, Love—"?
How can I dream of a subject aesthetic,
Far from the purlieus of prose?
How, with the call of the peripatetic
"High! High cash clo'es!"?
How can I write when the children are crying?
How can I poetize—how?
How can I help imper_fect_ versifying?
(There is some now.)
How can I bathe in the thought—waves of
beauty?
How, with my nerves on the slant,
Can I perform my poetical duty?
Frankly, I can't.
Ballade of the Breakfast Table
When the Festal Board, as the papers say,
Groans 'neath the weight of a lot to eat,
At breakfast, Fruhstuck or dejeuner,
(As a bard tri-lingual I'm rather neat)
At breakfast, then, if I may repeat,
This is what gets me into a huff,
This is a query I cannot beat:
Why don't they ever have spoons enough?
I've broken my fast with the grave and gay,
With hoi polloi and with the elite;
I've been all over the U. S. A.
From Dorchester Crossing to Kearney Street.
But aye when I sit in the morning seat
Comes to my notice the self-same bluff,
Plenty of food, but in this they cheat:
Why don't they ever have spoons enough?
Take it at breakfast, only to-day:
This was the layout, fresh and sweet:
Canteloupe, sweet as the new-mown hay;[Footnote: And about as edible.]
Cereal—one of the brands[Footnote: To advertisers: This space for sale.]
of wheat;
Soft—boiled eggs (we've cut out the meat);
Coffee (a claro—manila—buff);
Napery, china, and glasses complete—
Why don't they ever have spoons enough?