POETS
EDITOR—"Have you submitted this poem anywhere else?"
JOKESMITH—"No, sir."
EDITOR—"Then where did you get that black eye?"—Satire.
"Why is it," asked the persistent poetess, "that you always insist that we write on one side of the paper only? Why not on both?"
In that moment the editor experienced an access of courage—courage to protest against the accumulated wrongs of his kind.
"One side of the paper, madame," he made answer, "is in the nature of a compromise."
"A compromise?"
"A compromise. What we really desire, if we could have our way, is not one, or both, but neither."
Sir Lewis Morris was complaining to Oscar Wilde about the neglect of his poems by the press. "It is a complete conspiracy of silence against me, a conspiracy of silence. What ought I to do, Oscar?" "Join it," replied Wilde.
God's prophets of the Beautiful,
These Poets were.
—E.B. Browning.
We call those poets who are first to mark
Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,—
Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark,
While others only note that day is gone.
—O.W. Holmes.