Ventures Into Verse / Being various ballads, ballades, rondeaux, triolets, songs, quatrains, odes and roundels, all rescued from the potters' field of old files and here given decent burial - H. L. Mencken

(Curtain)

Love's song is sung in ragtime now

And kisses sweet are syncopated joys,

The tender sign, the melancholy moan,

The soft reproach and yearning up-turned gaze

Have passed into the caves without the gates

And in their place, to serve love's purposes,

Bold profanations from the music halls

Are working overtime.