Impertinent Poems. Cooke Edmund Vance

      You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.)

      Why?

      You cannot afford it? Bosh! you spend

      Editions de luxe on a thirsty friend.

      You can buy any one of the poetry bunch

      For the price you pay for a business lunch.

      Don't you suppose that a hungry head,

      Like an empty stomach, ought to be fed?

      Looking into myself, I find this true,

      So I hardly can figure it false in you.

      And you don't read poetry very much.

      (Such

      Is my own case also.) "But," you cry,

      "I haven't the time." Beloved, you lie.

      When a scandal happens in Buffalo,

      You ponder the details, con and pro;

      If poets were pugilists, couldn't you tell

      Which of the poets licked John L.?

      If poets were counts, could your wife be fooled

      As to which of the poets married a Gould?

      And even my books might have some hope

      If poetry books were books of dope.

      "You're a little bit swift," you say to me,

      "See!"

      You open your library. There you show

      Your "favorite poets," row on row,

      Chaucer, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe,

      A Homer unread, an uncut Horace,

      A wholly forgotten William Morris.

      My friend, my friend, can it be you thought

      That these were poets whom you had bought?

      These are dead men's bones. You bought their mummies

      To display your style, like clothing dummies.

      But when do they talk to you? Some one said

      That these were poets which should be read,

      So here they stand. But tell me, pray,

      How many poets who live to-day

      Have you, of your own volition, sought,

      Discovered and tested, proved and bought,

      With a grateful glow that the dollar you spent

      Netted the poet his ten per cent.?

      "But hold on," you say, "I am reading you."

      True,

      And pitying, too, the sorry end

      Of the dog I tried this on. My friend,

      I can write poetry – good enough

      So you wouldn't look at the worthy stuff.

      But knowing what you prefer to read

      I'm setting the pace at about your speed,

      Being rather convinced these truths will hold you

      A little bit better than if I'd told you

      A genuine poem and forgotten to scold you.

      Besides, when I open my little room

      And see my poets, each in his tomb,

      With his mouth dust-stopped, I turn from the shelf

      And I must scold you, or scold myself.

      Thomas Moore, at the present date,

      Is chiefly known as "a ten-cent straight."

      Walter, the Scot, is forgiven his rimes

      Because of his tales of stirring times.

      William Morris's fame will wear

      As a practical man who made a chair.

      And even Shakespere's memory's green

      Less because he's read than because he's seen.

      Then why should a poet make his bow

      In the year of nineteen hundred and now?

      Homer himself, if he could but speak,

      Would admit that most of his stuff is Greek.

      Chaucer would no doubt own his tongue

      Was the broken speech of the land when young.

      Shelley's a sealed-up book, and Byron

      Is chiefly recalled as a masculine siren.

      Poe has a perch on the chamber door,

      But the populace read him "Nevermore."

      Spenser fitted his day, as all allow,

      But this is nineteen hundred and now.

      Tennyson's chiefly given away

      To callow girls on commencement day.

      Alfred Austin, entirely solemn,

      Is quoted most in the funny column.

      Riley's Hoosiers have made their pile

      And moved to the city to live in style.

      Kipling's compared to "The Man Who Was,"

      And the rest of us write with little cause,

      Till publishers shy at talk of per cents.,

      But offer to print "at author's expense."

      O, once the "celestial fire" burned bright,

      But the world now calls for electric light!

      And Pegasus, too, is run by meter,

      Being trolleyized to make him fleeter.

      So I throw the stylus away and set

      Myself at the typewriter alphabet

      To spell some message I find within

      Which shall also scratch your rawhide skin,

      For you must read it, if I learn how

      To write for nineteen hundred and now.

      When the plan which I have, to grow suddenly rich

      Grows weary of leg and drops into the ditch,

      And scheme follows scheme

      Like the web of a dream

      To glamor and glimmer and shimmer and seem…

      Only seem;

      And then, when the world looks unfadably blue,

      If my rival sails by

      With his head in the sky,

      And sings "How is business?" why, what do I do?

      Well, I claim that I aim to be honest and true,

      But I sometimes lie. Don't you?

      When something at home is decidedly