Familiar Faces. Graham Harry

      O my Author, do you hear the Autumn calling?

      Does its message fail to reach you in your den,

      Where the ink that once so sluggishly was crawling

      Courses swiftly through your stylographic pen?

      'Tis the season when the editor grows active,

      When the office-boy looks longingly to you.

      Won't you give him something novel and attractive

      To review?

      Never mind if you are frivolous or solemn,

      If you only can be striking and unique,

      The reviewers will concede you half a column

      In their literary journals, any week.

      And 'twill always be your publisher's ambition

      To provide for the demand that you create,

      And dispose of a gigantic first edition,

      While you wait.

      O my Author, can't you pull yourself together,

      Try to expiate the failures of the past,

      And just ask yourself dispassionately whether

      You can't give us something better than your last?

      If you really – if you truly – are a poet,

      As you fancy – pray forgive my being terse —

      Don't you think you might occasionally show it

      In your verse?

      O my Publisher, how dreadfully you bore me!

      Of your censure I am frankly growing tired.

      With your diatribes eternally before me,

      How on earth can I expect to feel inspired?

      You are orderly, no doubt, and systematic,

      In that office where recumbent you recline;

      You would modify your methods in an attic

      Such as mine.

      If you lived a sort of hand-to-mouth existence

      (Where the mouth found less employment than the hand);

      If your rhymes would lend your humour no assistance,

      And your wit assumed a form that never scann'd;

      If you sat and waited vainly at your table

      While Calliope declined to give her cues,

      You would realise how very far from stable

      Was the Mews!

      You would find it quite impossible to labour

      With the patient perseverance of a drone,

      While some tactless but enthusiastic neighbour

      Played a cake walk on a wheezy gramophone,

      While your peace was so disturbed by constant clatter,

      That at length you grew accustomed – nay, resigned,

      To the never-ending victory of Matter

      Over Mind.

      While you batten upon plovers' eggs and claret,

      In the shelter of some fashionable club,

      I am starving, very likely, in a garret,

      Off the street so incorrectly labelled Grub,

      Where the vintage smacks distinctly of the ink-butt,

      And the atmosphere is redolent of toil,

      And there's nothing for the journalist to drink but

      Midnight oil!

      It is useless to solicit inspiration

      When one isn't in the true poetic mood,

      When one contemplates the prospect of starvation,

      And one's little ones are clamouring for food.

      When one's tongue remains ingloriously tacit,

      One is forced with some reluctance to admit

      That, alas! (as Virgil said) Poeta nascit-

      -Ur, non fit!

      Then, my Publisher, be gentle with your poet;

      Do not treat him with the harshness he deserves,

      For, in fact, altho' you little seem to know it,

      You are gradually getting on his nerves.

      Kindly dam the foaming torrent of your curses,

      While I ask you, – yes, and pause for a reply, —

      Are you writing this immortal book of verses,

      Or am I?

      Gentle Reader, charge your tumbler

      With anæmic lemonade!

      Let us toast our fellow-fumbler,

      Who was surely born, not made.

      None of all our friends is "dearer"

      (Costs us more – to be jocose – );

      No relation could be nearer,

      More intensely "close"!

      Hear him indistinctly mumbling

      "Oh, I say, do let me pay!"

      Watch him in his pocket fumbling,

      In a dilatory way;

      Plumbing the unmeasured deeps there,

      With some muttered vague excuse,

      For the coinage that he keeps there,

      But will not produce.

      If he joins you in a hansom,

      You alone provide the fare;

      Not for all a monarch's ransom

      Would he pay his modest share.

      He may fumble with his collar,

      He may turn his pockets out,

      He can never find that dollar

      Which he spoke about!

      Cigarettes he sometimes offers,

      With a sort of old-world grace,

      But, when you accept them, proffers

      With surprise, an empty case.

      Your cigars, instead, he'll snatch, and,

      With the cunning of the fox,

      Ask you firmly for a match, and

      Pocket half your box!

      If with him a meal you share, too,

      You'll discover, when you've dined,

      That your friend has taken care to

      Leave his frugal purse behind.

      "We must sup together later,"

      He remarks, with right good-will,

      "Pass the Heidsieck, please; and, waiter,

      Bring my friend the bill!"

      At some crowded railway station

      He comes running up to you,

      And exclaims with agitation,

      "Take my ticket, will you, too?"

      Though his pow'rs of conversation

      In