“I never heard that poem before,” laughed the Poet, “though the sentiment in these commercial days is not unfamiliar.”
“True,” said the Idiot. “Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas, voiced the same idea when he said:
“‘Crown me not with spinach,
Wreathe me not with hay;
Place no salad on my head
When you bring the bay.
Give me not the water-cresses
To adorn my flowing tresses,
But at e’en
Crown my pockets good and strong
With the green—
The green that’s long.’”
“Do you remember that?” asked the Idiot.
“Only faintly,” said the Poet. “I think you read it to me once before, just after you—er—ah—rather just after Alfred Austin Biggs, of Texas—wrote it.”
The Idiot laughed. “I see you’re on,” he said. “Anyhow, it’s good sentiment, whether I wrote it or Biggs. Fact is, in my judgment, what the poet of to-day ought to do is to collect the long green from the present and the laurel from posterity. That’s a fair division. But what do you say to my proposition?”
“Well, it’s certainly—er—cheeky enough,” said the Poet. “Do I understand it?—you want me to father your poems. To tell the truth, until I hear some of them, I can’t promise to be more than an uncle to them.”
“That’s all right,” said the Idiot. “You ought to be cautious, as a matter of protection to your own name. I’ve got some of the goods right here. Here’s a little thing called ‘Summer-tide!’ It shows the whole ‘Now’ principle in a nutshell. Listen to this:
“Now the festive frog is croaking in the mere,
And the canvasback is honking in the bay,
And the summer-girl is smiling full of cheer
On the willieboys that chance along her way.
“Now the skeeter sings his carols to the dawn,
And bewails the early closing of the bar
That prevents the little nips he seeks each morn
On the sea-shore where the fatling boarders are.