Our dining-room is pretty dark;
Our kitchen's hot and very small;
The "view" we get of Central Park
We really do not get at all.
The ceiling cracks and crumbles down
Upon me while I'm working here—
But, after combing all the town,
We think we'll stay another year.
We are not "handy" to the sub;
Our hall-boy service is a joke;
Our janitor's a foreign dub
Who never does a thing but smoke
Our landlord says he will not cut
A cent from rent already dear;
And so we sought for better—but
We think we'll stay another year.
Birds and Bards
When Milton sang "O nightingale
That on yon gloomy spray,"
The sonneteer whom we revere
Lauded that birdie's lay.
While Keats's ode upon that bird
Was limpid as the notes
That, sweet and strong, were in the song
Of Philomelian throats.
And Bryant's "To a Water-fowl!"
Had praise in every line,
And every word about the bird
Impinged on the divine.
When Wordsworth did the skylark stuff,
He praised the bird a few,
And Shelley's ode sincerely showed
He liked the skylark, too.
O Poets, if ye had but dwelt
Upon a Harlem block,
Fain would I read your poems sweet
Upon the sparrows' "Peet! Peet! Peet!"
The sparrows that have built their nest
Ten feet from where one takes one's rest,
And 'gin their merry, blithesome song
Each morning—quenchless, clear and strong
Promptly at four o'clock.
A Wish