NINETY-NINE IN THE SHADE
O FOR a lodge in a garden of cucumbers!
O for an iceberg or two at control!
O for a vale which at mid-day the dew cumbers!
O for a pleasure-trip up to the pole!
O for a little one-story thermometer,
With nothing but zeroes all ranged in a row!
O for a big double-barreled hygrometer,
To measure this moisture that rolls from my brow!
O that this cold world were twenty times colder!
(That’s irony red-hot, it seemeth to me);
O for a turn of its dreaded cold shoulder!
O what a comfort an ague would be!
O for a grotto frost-lined and rill-riven,
Scooped in the rock under cataract vast!
O for a winter of discontent even!
O for wet blankets judiciously cast!
O for a soda-fount spouting up boldly
From every hot lamp-post against the hot sky!
O for proud maiden to look on me coldly,
Freezing my soul with a glance of her eye!
Then O for a draught from a cup of cold pizen,
And O for a resting-place in the cold grave!
With a bath in the Styx where the thick shadow lies on
And deepens the chill of its dark-running wave.
Rossiter Johnson.