Outlook Odes

by T. W. H. Crosland

TO THE TRIPPER

My dear Sir, or Madam,—
When James Watt,
Or some such person,
Had the luck
To see a kettle boil,
He little dreamed
That he was discovering you,
Otherwise he would have let his kettle boil
For a million million years
Without saying anything about it.
However,
James Watt
Omitted to take cognisance of the ultimate trouble,
And here you are.
And here, alas! you will stay,
Till our iron roads are beaten into ploughshares,
And Messrs. Cook & Sons are at rest.
"When I was young, a single man,
And after youthful follies ran"
(Which, strange as it may seem, is Wordsworth)
Your goings to and fro upon the earth,
And walkings up and down thereon,
Were limited by the day trip.
For half-a-crown
You went to Brighton,
Or to Buxton and Matlock,
Or Stratford-on-Avon,
As the case may be.
A special tap of ale
And a special cut of 'am
Were put on for your delectation;
You sang a mixture of hymns
And music-hall songs
On your homeward journey,
And there was an end of the matter.
But nowadays there is no escape from you.
The trip that was over and done
In twenty-four hours at most
Has become a matter
Of "Saturday to Monday at Sunny Saltburn,"
"Ten days in Lovely Lucerne,"
And "A Visit to the Holy Land for Ten Guineas."
Wherever one goes
On this wide globe
There shall one find
Your empty ginger-beer bottle and your old newspaper;
The devastations,
Fence-breakings,
And flower-pot maraudings
Which you once reserved for noblemen's seats
Are now extended to the Rigi,
The Bridge of Sighs,
Mount Everest,
And the deserts of Gobi
And Shamo.
Indeed, I question whether it would be possible
For one to traverse
The trackless forests of Mexico
Or "the dreary tundras of remote Siberia,"
Or to put one's nose
Into such an uncompromising fastness as Craig Ell Achaie
(Which is the last place the Canadian Pacific Railway made
And which may not be properly spelled)
Without coming upon you
Picnicking in a spinny,
And prepared to greet all and sundry
With that time-honoured remark,
"There's 'air,"
Or some other
Equally objectionable ribaldry.
Well, my dear Tripper,
Time is short,
And poets fill their columns easily,
So that I must not abuse you any more.
You are part of the Cosmos,
And as such I am bound to respect you;
But, by Day and Night,
I wish
That James Watt
Had taken no notice
Of his boiling kettle!

TO THE GLASGOW MAGISTRATES

(On their Proposal to Banish Barmaids)

May it please your Worships,
For years past, Glasgow has stood in the forefront
As a city given over to the small-pox
And magisterial reform.
It is, I believe,
An exceedingly well-managed city:
In fact, it appears to be managed
Out of all reasonable existence;
Hence, no doubt, it comes to pass
That it was lately visited
By a smart sample of the plague.
I have not the smallest doubt that your Worships
Are sincere and clean-thinking men.
I believe that you do what you do do, so to speak,
Out of sheer public spirit
And with a view to bettering the condition
Of the city over which you preside.
In other words, I impute no motives:
That is to say, no base motives.
But, my dear Worships,
Why, in the name of Heaven, would you abolish
The harmless, necessary barmaid?
Have you never been young?
Have you never known the tender delight
Of whiling away a morning
With your elbow on the zinc
And threepennyworth of Bass before you?
What, may I ask your Worships,
Is Bass without a barmaid?
I grant that, taking them all in all,
The barmaids of Scotland
Are not what you might term
An altogether bewitching lot.
Years ago, when I was young and callow,
Fate threw me into the propinquity
Of a lady of this ilk;
She hailed from Glasgow,
And she was not beautiful;
On the other hand, I was young.
And, out of an income which was even slenderer then
Than it is now,
I purchased for that dear lady of the North
Many bottles of perfume,
Many pairs of kid gloves,
And a Prayer Book or so;
And, when I had consumed innumerable Basses
At her altar,
And the time had, as I thought, become ripe,
I offered her matrimony,
To which she replied, in limpid Doric:
"Gang awa hame to yer mither."
That, my dear Worships,
Is Glasgow!
If you can weed out of Glasgow
All young females
Possessed of this particular kind of temperament,
I am not so sure
But that you would have my blessing.
On the other hand, I am free to admit
That I hae my doots as to your capacity for so doing.
The perfume-bottle,
The kid gloves,
The Prayer Book
And "Na, na, na, I winna,"
Will always remain the prerogatives
Of the Glasgae lassies,
If I know anything of them.
Also, my dear Worships,
One thing is absolutely certain,
That, if the magistrates of all the cities
In the United Kingdom
Would take the step you have taken,
We should have gone a very considerable way
Towards solving the drink problem,
And putting Sir Michael Hicks-Beach
Into a fearful hole for money.

P.S.—I hate Scotch men,
But I sometimes think that Scotch women
Are rather bonnie.

TO A BOOKSELLER

My dear Sir,—
"There lies a vale in Ida
Lovelier
Than all the valleys
Of Ionian hills."
I take it
That this is a geographical fact.
Anyway it is Tennyson,
And I quote it
In order that you may perceive
That I have some acquaintance
With the higher walks of Literature,
And am therefore a man
Of entirely different build from yourself.
I was born a poet,
And have stuck to my trade
Unto this last.
Possibly you were born a bookseller.
I am willing to give your credit for it,
But I doubt it all the same,
For I often think the average bookseller
Must have been born a draper.
The other day I had occasion to do a little book-buying.
It was my first essay
In what I now believe to be
An altogether elegant and delightful form
Of intellectual recreation.
Of course, I went into a shop:
From the yawning Cimmerianity at the back of that shop
There came unto me swiftly and in large boots
A fat youth.
He bowed, and he bowed, and he bowed.
"I want a good edition of Shelley," I said.
And he replied straightway
"Ninepenceshillingnetoneandsixpencenethalfa-
crownnettwoandeightpencethreeandnine-
pencefiveshillingsnethalfaguineaandkindly-
stepthisway."
I said, "Thank you,
But I want Shelley,
Not egg-whisks."
Whereat he smiled and banged under my nose
A heavy volume,
Bound like a cheap purse,
And murmured, "There you are,
The best line in the market,
Two-and-eight."
And because I opened it,
And looked disconsolately at the stodgy running-titles
And the entrancing red-line border,
He cast upon me eyes of contempt and disgust,
And told me that I could not expect
Kelmscott Press and tree-calf
At the money.
In fact, that fat youth
Annoyed me.
He
Was
A bookseller.
Ah, my dear Sir,
When I reflect that whatever I may write,
No matter how excellent it may be,
Must ultimately pass into the hands
Of that fat youth
And become to him
Something
At ninepenceashillingneteighteenpencetwoandsix-
netthreeandninefiveshillingsnetorhalfaguinea-
andkindlystepthisway
The spirit of my fathers quails within me,
I know that authorship
Is a trade for fools.
Go to!
Ninepence me no ninepences,
Two-and-sixpence me no nets,
Bring yourself at once
To your logical conclusion,
And next time I call upon you
For Shelley,
Sell him to me,
As you appear to sell "Temporal Power."
By the pound
Avoirdupois.