Читать книгу Bar-Room Ballads - Robert William Service - Страница 4

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To smite Apollo’s lyre I am unable;

Of loveliness, alas! I cannot sing.

My lot it is, across the tavern table,

To start a chorus to the strumming string.

I have no gift to touch your heart to pity;

I have no power to ring the note of pain:

All I can do is pipe a pothouse ditty.

Or roar a Rabelaisian refrain.

Behold yon minstrel of the empty belly,

Who seeks to please the bored and waiting throng,

Outside the Opera with ukelele,

And raucous strains of syncopated song.

His rag-time mocks their eager hearts a-hunger

For golden voices, melody divine:

Yet ... throw a penny to the ballad-monger;

Yet ... listen idly to this song of mine.

For with a humble heart I clank rhyme’s fetters,

And bare my buttocks to the critic knout;

A graceless hobo in the Land of Letters,

Piping my ditties of the down-and-out.

A bar-room bard ... so if a coin you’re flinging,

Pay me a pot, and let me dream and boose;

To stars of scorn my dour defiance ringing,

With battered banjo and a strumpet Muse.