Читать книгу Impertinent Poems - Cooke Edmund Vance - Страница 3

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.