More Misrepresentative Men. Graham Harry

      WHEN honest men are all in bed,

      We poets at our desks are toiling,

      To earn a modicum of bread,

      And keep the pot a-boiling;

      We weld together, bit by bit,

      The fabric of our laboured wit.

      We see with eyes of frank dismay

      The coming of this Autumn season,

      When bards are driven to display

      Their feast of rhyme and reason;

      With hectic brain and loosened collar,

      We chase the too-elusive dollar.

      While Publishers, in search of grist,

      Despise our masterly inaction,

      And shake their faces in our fist,

      Demanding satisfaction,

      We view with vague or vacant mind

      The grim agreements we have signed.

      For though a willing public gives

      Its timely share of cash assistance,

      The author (like the dentist) lives

      A hand-to-mouth existence;

      And Publishers, those modern Circes,

      Make pig's-ear purses of his verses.

      Behold! How ill, how thin and pale,

      The features of the furtive jester!

      Compelled by contracts to curtail

      His moments of siesta!

      A true White Knight is he to-day

      (Nuit Blanche, as Stevenson would say).

      Ah, surely he has laboured well,

      Constructing this immortal sequel, —

      A work which no one could excel,

      And very few can equal, —

      A volume which, I dare to say,

      Is epoch-making, in its way.

      When other poets' work is not,

      These verses shall retain their label;

      When Herford is a thing forgot,

      And Ade an ancient fable;

      When Goops no longer give a sign

      Of Burgess's empurpled kine.

      My Publishers, I love you so!

      Your well-secreted virtues viewing;

      Who never let your right hand know

      Whom your left hand is doing;

      Who hold me firmly in your grip,

      And crack your cheque-book, like a whip!

      My Publishers, make no mistake,

      You have in me an avis rara,

      So write a princely cheque, and make

      It payable to bearer;

      I love you, as I said before,

      But oh! I love your money more!

      VORACIOUS Author, gorged with gold,

      Your grasping greed shall not avail!

      In vain you venture to unfold

      Your false prehensile tale!

      I view in scorn (unmixed with awe)

      The width of your capacious maw.

      On me the onus has to fall

      Of your malevolent effusions;

      'Tis I who bear the brunt of all

      Your libellous allusions;

      To bolster up your turgid verse,

      I jeopardise my very purse!

      You do not hesitate to fleece

      The Publisher you scorn to thank,

      And when you manage to decrease

      His balance at the bank,

      Your face is lighted up with greed,

      And you are lantern-jawed indeed!

      Yet will I still heap coals of fire,

      Until your coiffure is imbedded,

      And you at last, perchance, shall tire

      Of growing so hot-headed,

      And realise that being funny

      Is not a mere affair of money.

      And so, in honour of your pow'rs,

      A fragrant bouquet will I pick,

      Of rare exotics, blossoms, flow'rs

      Of speech and rhetoric;

      I'll add a thistle, if I may,

      And, round the whole, a wreath of bay.

      The blossoms for your button-hole,

      To mark your affluent condition,

      Exotics to inspire your soul

      To further composition.

      Come, set the bays upon your brow!

      Well, eat the thistle, anyhow!

      THE jingling rhymes of Dr. Watts

      Excite the reader's just impatience,

      He wearies of Sir Walter Scott's

      Melodious verbal collocations,

      And with advancing years he learns

      To love the simpler style of Burns.

      Too much the careworn critic knows

      Of that obscure robustious diction,

      Which like a form of fungus grows

      Amid the Kailyard school of fiction;

      In Crockett's cryptic caves one sighs

      For Burns's clear and spacious skies.

      Tho' no aspersions need be cast

      On Barrie's wealth of wit fantastic,

      Creator of that unsurpass'd

      If most minute ecclesiastic;

      Yet even here the eye discerns

      No master-hand like that of Burns.

      The works of Campbell and the rest

      Exhale a sanctimonious odour,

      Their vintage is but Schnapps, at best,

      Their Scotch is simply Scotch-and-sodour!

      They cannot hope, like Burns, to win

      That "touch which makes the whole world kin."

      Tho' some may sing of Neil Munro,

      And virtues in Maclaren see,

      Or want but little here below,

      And want that little Lang, maybe;

      Each renegade at length returns,

      To praise the peerless pow'rs of Burns.

      His verse, as all the world declares,

      And