SOME MORE BAD WORDS.
In a recent verse adventure
I compiled "a little list"
Of the verbs deserving censure,
Verbs that "never would be missed";
Now, to flatter the fastidious,
Suffer me the work to crown
With three epithets—all hideous—
And one noisome noun.
First, to add to the recital
Of the words that gall and irk,
Is the old offender "vital,"
Done to death by overwork;
Only a prolonged embargo
On its use by Press and pen
Can recall this kind of argot
Back to life again.
I, in days not very distant,
Though the memory gives me pain,
From the awful word "insistent"
Did not utterly refrain;
Once it promised to refresh us,
Seemed to be alert enough;
Now I loathe it, laboured, precious—
Merely verbal fluff.
Thirdly, in the sheets that daily
Cater for our vulgar needs,
There's a word that figures gaily
In reviewers' friendly screeds,
Who declare a book's "arresting,"
Mostly, it must be confessed,
Meaning just the problem-questing
Which deserves arrest.
Last and vilest of this bad band
Is that noun of gruesome sound,
"Uplift," which the clan of Chadband
Hold in reverence profound;
Used for a dynamic function
'Tis a word devoid of guile,
Only as connoting unction
It excites my bile.
Why, fastidious poetaster,
Waste your energy and breath
Like a petulant schoolmaster
Only doing words to death?
Needlessly you slate and scourge us;
War, that sifts and tries and tests,
May be safely left to purge us
Of these verbal pests.
England, February, 1917.—"The great loan land."
