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Ogden Nash
SEEING EYE TO EYE IS BELIEVING
"" 1992
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A FRIEND IN NEED WILL BE AROUND IN FIVE
MINUTES
What are friends?
Why, they are people for love of whom one goes out and
eagerly borrows what one to them eagerly lends,
Who in return assure one that if one were about to be
eaten by an octopus they would dive fathoms deep
to the rescue at the risk of contracting the bends,
But who, if one faces any more prosaic emergency such as
asking if they would mind one's bringing along an
extra girl, one is making a mistake if one on them depends.
They are people on whose entertainment one's entire income
one hospitably and hebdomadally spends,
And who at one's house eat birthright and at their house
one eats pottage and other odds and ends,
And for whose behavior one is to one's foes constantly
making amends,
Yes, that's what are friends.
What then are foes?
Why they are the least of anybody sensible's woes,
Because if there is one thing that you might of anybody
sensible suppose,
It is that he wouldn't have anything to do with people who
prove to be foes,
Because obviously if one tarries blithely among one's
proven foemen,
Why whom has one to blame but oneself if one receives a
poisoned barb in the small of the back or a poisoned
comment on the large of the abdomen?
Yes, friends are unavoidable and epidemic and therefore
friend trouble is forgivable but I have no sympathy
for him who circles Robin Hood's barn and exposes
Himself to foeses.
I maintain that foes are very nice people as long as a reason-
?able distance separates oneself and them, whereas a
friend in need or in his cups can reach you across mountains
of glass and lakes of fire, with which re?mark I shall now
close,
Simply pausing to add that compared to a friend at the
front door I find foes at a reasonable distance rather
restful, and from now on I shall ever think of them
as Comme Il Fauts.
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THE JAPANESE
How courteous is the Japanese;
He always says, ?Excuse it, please."
He climbs into his neighbour's garden,
And smiles, and says, ?I beg your pardon";
He bows and grins a friendly grin,
And calls his hungry family in;
He grins, and bows a friendly bow;
?So sorry, this my garden now."
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FRAILTY, THY NAME IS A MISNOMER
Once there was a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Pepperloaf
and they were simply devoted,
Because each other was upon what they doted,
And in Mrs. Pepperloaf's eyes Mr. Pepperloaf could never err,
And he admitted only one flaw in her,
But it was a flaw which took many virtues to assuage,
Consisting in always asking him the date while she was reading
the paper with the date clearly printed on every page,
And whenever he called her attention to this least admirable
of her trails
She would retort that he didn't trust the paper's weather
forecasts so then why should she trust its dates.
For eleven years his patience held
But finally he rebelled.
It was on the evening of Friday the seventh that she looked
up from her paper and asked him the date,
And he replied firmly that she would find it at the top of
the page so she looked at the top of the page and that
was that, and presently they sat down to supper and ate,
And they were miserable because they had never disagreed
and this contretemps was a beginner for them,
And at nine his employer's wife called up to ask where were
they,
she and eleven guests were waiting dinner for them,
And Mr. Pepperloaf asked Mrs. Pepperloaf how she could
have so misreckoned,
And she said she knew that they had been invited out on
the seventh but, according to the newspaper he had
instructed her to consult, tonight was only the second,
And he picked up the paper and it was last week's, not
today's,
And she said certainly, she had just been reading over some
recipes for different delicious souffles,
And now she found the first flaw in him because she had
obeyed his order to look for the date in the paper,
hadn't she, so his irritation was uncalled for and
unseasonable.
Women would rather be right than reasonable.
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BETWEEN BIRTHDAYS
My birthdays take so long to start.
They come along a year apart.
It's worse than waiting for a bus;
I fear I used to fret and fuss,
But now, when by impatience vexed
Between one birthday and the next,
I think of all that I have seen
That keeps on happening in between.
The songs I've heard, the things I've done,
Make my un-birthdays not so un-
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AND THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX
IN LEAP YEAR
Some people shave before bathing,
And about people who bathe before shaving they are
scathing,
While those who bathe before shaving,
Well, they imply that those who shave before bathing are
misbehaving.
Suppose you shave before bathing, well the advantage is
that you don't have to make a special job of washing
the lather off afterwards, it just floats off with the rest
of your accumulations in the tub,
But the disadvantage is that before bathing your skin is
hard and dry and your beard confronts the razor like
a grizzly bear defending its cub.
Well then, suppose you bathe before shaving, well the
advantage is that after bathing your skin is soft and
moist, and your beard positively begs for the blade,
But the disadvantage is that to get the lather off you have
to wash your face all over again at the basin almost
immediately after washing it in the tub, which is a
duplication of effort that leaves me spotless but dis-mayed.
The referee reports, gentlemen, that Fate has loaded the
dice,
Since your only choice is between walking around all day
with a sore chin or washing your face twice,
So I will now go and get a shave from a smug man in a crisp
white coat,
And I will disrupt his smugness by asking him about his
private life, does he bathe before shaving or shave be-
fore bathing, and then I will die either of laughing
or of a clean cut throat.
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SEEING EYE TO EYE IS BELIEVING
When speaking of people and their beliefs I wear my
belief on my sleeve;
I believe that people believe what they believe they
believe.
When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because
it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it,
No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the first
place
they simply say, ?Nothing doing", and refuse to
inspect it.
Likewise when they embrace a truth or an untruth it is not
for either its truth or its mendacity,
But simply because they have believed it all along and
therefore regard the embrace as a tribute to their own
fair-mindedness and sagacity.
There are enlightened days in which you can get hot water
and cold water out of the same spigot,
And everybody has something about which they are proud
to be broad-minded but they also have other things
about which you would be wasting your breath if you
tried to convince them that they were a bigot,
And I have no desire to get ugly,
But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted
mind opens outwards so that the only result of the
pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.
Naturally I am not pointing a finger at me,
But I must admit that I find Mr. Ickes or any other speaker
far more convincing when I agree with him than when
I disagree.
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JACK DO-GOOD-FOR-NOTHING
(A cursory nursery tale for lot-bailers)
Once there was a kindhearted lad named
Jack Do-Good-for-Nothing, the only son of a
poor widow whom creditors did importune,
So he set out in the world to make his fortune.
His mother's blessing and a crust of bread was
his only stake,
And pretty soon he saw a frog that about to be
devoured by a snake.
And he rescued the frog and drove the snake away,
And the frog vowed gratitude to its dying day,
And a little later on in his walk,
Why, he saw a little red hen about to be carried off
by a hawk,
And he rescued the little red hen and drove the
hawk away,
And the little red hen vowed that whenever he was
in trouble his kindness she would repay,
And he walked a few more country blocks,
And he saw a bunny rabbit about to be gobbled up
by a fox,
And he rescued the bunny rabbit before the fox
could fall on it,
And the bunny rabbit thanked Jack and told him
any time he needed help, just to call on it,
And after all this rescuing, Jack was huffing
and puffing,
And a little farther on the snake and the hawk and
the fox jumped him, and out of him they beat
the stuffing;
They even stole his crust of bread and each ate a
third of it,
And the frog and the little red hen and the bunny
rabbit said they were very sorry when they heard of it.
You see, Jack against a cardinal rule of conduct had
been a transgressor:
Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared
to take on the oppressor.
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THE MERMAID
Say not the mermaid is a myth,
I knew one once named Mrs. Smith.
She stood while playing cards or knitting:
Mermaids are not equipped for sitting.
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THE PURIST
I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist.
Trustees exclaimed,
?He never bungles!
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
"You, mean," he said, ?a crocodile."
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*****
Einstein received a questionnaire
In which they asked him to declare
Whether he thought we might be forced
Into atomic holocaust.
So, putting down his violin
The old man neatly pencilled in
The middle of the form they sent.
(Yes. Not, I trust, by accident).
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Oh, weep for Mr and Mrs Bryan!
He was eaten by a lion;
Following which, the lion's lioness
Up and swallowed Bryan's Bryaness.
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DR. FELL AND POINTS WEST
Your train leaves at eleven-forty-five and it is now but
eleven-thirty-nine and a half,
And there is only one man ahead of you at the ticket window
so you have plenty of time, haven't you, well I
hope you enjoy a hearty laugh,
Because he is Dr. Fell, and he is engaged in an intricate
maneuver,
He wants to go to Sioux City with stopovers at Plymouth
Rock, Stone Mountain, Yellowstone Park, Lake Louise
and Vancouver,
And he would like some information about an alternate
route, One that would include New Orleans and Detroit,
with possibly a day or two in Minneapolis and Butte,
And when the agent has compiled the data with the aid of
a slug of aromatic spirits and a moist bandanna,
He says that settles it, he'll spend his vacation canoeing up
and down the Susquehanna,
And oh yes, which way is the bus terminal and what's
playing at the Rivoli,
And how do the railroads expect to stay in business when
their employees are incapable of answering a simple
question accurately or civilly?
He then demands and receives change for twenty dollars
and saunters off leaving everybody's jaw with a sag
on it,
And when you finally get to buy your ticket not only has
your train gone but you also discover that your porter
has efficiently managed to get your bag on it.
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THE HIPPOPOTAMUS
Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim
I wonder how we look to him.
Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.
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A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO THE OCEAN
Let us now consider the ocean.
It is always in motion.
It is generally understood to be the source of much of our
rain,
And ten thousand fleets are said to have swept over it in
vain.
When the poet requested it to break break break on its
cold gray rocks it obligingly broke broke broke.
Which as the poet was Alfred Lord Tennyson didn't surprise
him at all but if it had been me I would probably
have had a stroke.
Some people call it the Atlantic and some the Pacific or
the Antarctic or the Indian or the Mediterranean Sea,
But I always say what difference does it make, some old
geographer mumbling a few words of it, it will always
be just the Ocean to me.
There is an immortal dignity about something like the
Atlantic,
Which seems to drive unimmortal undignified human
beings frustratedly frantic.
Just give them one foot on the beach and people who were
perfectly normal formerly, or whilom,
Why, they are subject to whoops and capers that would
get them blackballed from an asylum;
Yet be they never so rampant and hollerant,
The ocean is tolerant,
Except a couple of times a day it gives up in disgust and
goes off by itself and hides,
And that, my dears, accounts for the tides.
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THE MULES
In the world of mules
There are no rules.
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An elderly bride of Port Jcrvis
Was quite understandably nervis.
Since her apple - cheeked groom,
With three wines in the tomb,
Kept insuring her during the service.
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lady from near Rising Sun,
She flattened her boy friend in fun,
Saying, Don't worry kid,
That's for nothing you did,
It's for something I dreamed that you done.
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NOW TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF
Everybody speaks of being patronized,
Yet nobody speaks of the truly irksome shambles which is,
or are, being matronized,
By which I mean that there is nothing more impolitely and
noticeably aloof
Than a woman of a certain sort sounding out a man of
whose certain sort she hasn't yet got definite affidavits
or proof.
She displays the great names of her acquaintance for his
benefit like a nouveau riche displaying his riches,
And fixes him with the stare of a psychiatrist to see if there
is one at which he twitches.
George Washington and George Sand and Lloyd George
to her are Georgie,
And she would have addressed the Borgias behind their
back as Borgie.
She always wants to know, first, where do you come from,
and second, do you of course know Babs and Bonzo
Beaver there, which you never do, often for your own
very good reasons, but you try to make your reply a
polite one,
So you murmur, ?Well I don't really know them, but I
know of them," and she at once assigns you to your
proper side of the tracks, and it is not the right one.
When she discusses national affairs she doesn't talk exactly
treasonably, But she refers to that part of the nation which
lies outside
of New York in the bright tone of one referring to a
little tailor she has just discovered who does alterations
very reasonably.
Please do not get the impression that a matronizing
woman causes me to froth at the mouth or slaver;
I only wish to notify you that whenever you want her you
can have her.
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There was a lady loved a gent,
But her reward was meager.
Said her gentleman friend to his gentleman friends,
The lady's overeager.
There was a lady loved a gent,
She held her backbone rigid.
Said her gentleman friend to his gentleman friends,
The lady's for too frigid.
There was a lady loved herself,
But equipped with COLD and HOT.
Said her gentleman friends to their gentleman friends,
Whatever it is, she's got.
Oh let us laugh at the lines above,
Less precious than pearls and rubies -
Telling the ladies what ladies know,
That gentlemen ALL are boobies.
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THE ANT
The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what?
Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
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THE PARENT
Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
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THOUGHTS THOUGHT ON AN AVENUE
There would be far lees masculine gaming and boozing
But for the feminine approach to feminine fashions, which
is distinctly confusing.
Please correct me if, although I don't think I do, I err;
But it is a fact that a lady wants to be dressed exactly
like
everybody else but she gets pretty upset if she see
anybody else dressed exactly like her.
Nothing so infuriates her as a similar hat or dress,
Especially if bought for less,
Which brings up another point which I will attempt to
discuss in my guttural masculine jargon;
Her ideal raiment is costlier than her or her dearest
friend's
purse can buy, and at the same time her own exclusive
and amazing bargain.
Psychologists claim that men are the dreamers and women
are the realists,
But to my mind women are the starriest-eyed of idealists,
Though I am willing to withdraw this charge and gladly
eat it uncomplaineously.
If anyone can explain to me how a person can wear a costume
that is different from other people's and the same
as other people's and more expensive than other
people's and cheaper than other people's, simultaneously.
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THE FLY
God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.
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FUNEBRIAL REFLECTION
Among the anthropophagi
People's friends are people's sarcophagi.
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THE CHERUB
I like to watch the clouds roll by,
And think of cherubs in the sky;
But when I think of cherubim,
I don't know if they're her or him.
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SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
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NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW I DON'T
Some people look to the future and others look days of
yore-wards,
But even they see more eye to eye than two people on a
train one of whom is riding backwards and the other
forwards.
I don't know how it does or when,
But anything interesting described by a forwards rider has
vanished by the time it should have swum into the
backwards rider's ken,
While, through a freak twist of the current
The backwards rider gets to see a lot of interesting things
that should have been there a moment ago for
the forwards rider to see but somehow they just
wurrent.
Travelers have told me and 1 have believed them,
That such noticeable objects as the Mississippi River and
the Sierra Nevada mountains have disappeared between
the time when the forwards rider pointed them
out and the backwards rider should have perceived them.
There are those who in an effort to explain this phenomenon
have developed a disturbing knack;
They sit forwards and look back,
While others to whom their vertebrae are dearer
Sit backwards and gaze on the fleeting landscape through
a mirror.
But no matter what they describe
Their accounts never jibe.
When I eventually establish my Universal Travel Service
and Guide Ways
I shall advise all my clients who really want to see anything
just to sit at home and look sideways.
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GET UP, FELLOWS, IT'S TIME TO GO TO BED
It's more than logical, it's biological,
To be lethargikal,
And contrariwise it's abecedarian, or childishly alphabetic,
That it's ridiculous to be energetic.
Welcome, lassitude!
Scram, vivacitude!
Up with the grasshopper and the sluggard!
Away with the ant and the bee and all individualists
whether puny or ruggard!
Before our ancestors were apes they were fish,
But they improved their condition and got to be human
beings and founded a lot of empires such as the ancient
Persian and Roman and the contemporary Brish,
But the ocean today with us would be brimming
If our ancestors hadn't had sense enough to stop all that
continuous swimming,
Whereas now we can ride up and down in elevators and go
to the movies, and fish are only something about
which some people say, ?Yum yum, right put of the
water and fried to a delicate golden, brown",
And the only reason the fish aren't eating the people in-
stead of the people eating the fish is that fish can't do
two things that have got people where they are, they
can't close their eyes and they can't sit down.
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WE DON'T NEED TO LEAVE YET, DO WE?
OR, YES WE DO
One kind of person when catching a train always wants to
allow an hour to cover the ten-block trip to the terminus,
And the other kind looks at them as if they were verminous,
And the second kind says that five minutes is plenty and
will even leave one minute over for buying the tickets,
And the first kind looks at them as if they had cerebral
rickets.
One kind when theater-bound sups lightly at six and
hastens off to the play,
And indeed I know one such person who is so such that it
frequently arrives in time for the last act of the matinee,
And the other kind sits down at eight to a meal that is
positively sumptuous,
Observing cynically that an eight-thirty curtain never rises
till eight-forty, an observation which is less cynical
than bumptious.
And what the first kind, sitting uncomfortably in the waiting
room while the train is made up in the yards, can
never understand, Is the injustice of the second kind's
reaching their scat
just as the train moves out, just as they had planned,
And what the second kind cannot understand as they
stumble over the first kind's feel just as the footlights
flash on at last Is that the first kind doesn't feel the least
bit foolish at
having entered the theater before the cast.
Oh, the first kind always wants to start now and the second
kind always wants to tarry,
Which wouldn't make any difference, except that each
other is what they always marry.
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THE TURTLE
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
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THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. ORMANTUDE'S BRIDE
Once there was a bridegroom named Mr. Ormantude
whose intentions were hard to disparage,
Because he intended to make his a happy marriage,
And he succeeded for going on fifty years,
During which he was in marital bliss up to his ears.
His wife's days and nights were enjoyable
Because he catered to every foible;
He went around humming hymns
And anticipating her whims.
Many a fine bit of repartee died on his lips
Lest it throw her anecdotes into eclipse;
He was always silent when his cause was meritorious,
And he never engaged in argument unless sure he was so
obviously wrong that she couldn't help emerging victorious,
And always when in her vicinity
He was careful to make allowances for her femininity;
Were she snappish, he was sweetish,
And of understanding her he made a fetish.
Everybody said his chances of celebrating his golden wedding
looked good,
But on his golden wedding eve he was competently poisoned
by his wife who could no longer stand being perpetually
understood.
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THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS
The people upstairs all practice ballet.
Their living room is a bowling alley.
Their bedroom is full of conducted tours.
Their radio is louder than yours.
They celebrate week-ends all the week.
When they take a shower, your ceilings leak.
They try to get their parties to mix
By supplying their guests with Pogo sticks,
And when their orgy at last abates,
They go to the bathroom on roller skates.
I might love the people upstairs wondrous
If instead of above us, they just lived under us.
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SWEET DREAMS
I wonder as into bed I creep
What it feels like to fall asleep.
I've told myself stories, I've counted sheep,
But I'm always asleep when I fall asleep.
Tonight my eyes I will open keep,
And I'll stay awake till I fall asleep,
Then I'll know what it feels like to fall asleep,
Asleep,
Asleeep,
Asleeeep...
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THE TERMITE
Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your
Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today.
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I'M SURE SHE SAID SIX-THIRTY
One of the hardest explanations to be found
Is an explanation for just standing around.
Anyone just standing around looks pretty sinister,
Even a minister;
Consider then the plight of the criminal,
Who lacks even the protective coloration of a hyminal,
And as just standing around is any good criminal's practically
daily stint,
I wish to proffer a hint.
Arc you, sir, a masher who blushes as he loiters,
Do you stammer to passers-by that you are merely expecting
a street-car, or a dispatch from Reuter's?
Or perhaps you are a safeblower engaged in casing a joint;
Can you look the patrolman in the eye or do you forget
all the savoir-faire you ever loint?
Suppose you are a shoplifter awaiting an opportunity to
lift a shop,
Or simply a novice with a length of lead pipe killing time
in a dark alley pending the arrival of a wealthy fop,
Well, should any official ask you why you are just standing
around,
Do you wish you could simply sink into the ground?
My dear sir, do not be embarrassed, do not reach for your
gun or your knife, Remember the password, which, uttered in a
tone of quiet
despair, is the explanation of anyone's standing
around anywhere at any hour for any length of time:
?I'm waiting for my wife".
6.30
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THE SNIFFLE
In spite of her sniffle, Isabel's chiffle.
Some girls with a sniffle
Would be weepy and tiffle;
They would look awful,
Like a rained-n waffle,
But Isabel's chiffle
In spite of her sniffle.
Her nose is more red
With a cold in her head,
But then, to be sure,
Her eyes are bluer.
Some girls with a snuffle,
Their tempers are uffle,
But when Isabel's snivelly
She's snivelly civilly.
And when she is snuffly
She's perfectly luffly.
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The song about the happy-go-lucky fellow who hasn't time
to be a millionaire strikes me as pretty funny,
Because I am pretty happy-go-lucky myself but it isn't lack
of time that keeps me from being a millionaire, it's lack of
money,
But if anybody has a million that they're through with it
Well, I know what I'd like to do with it.
My first acquisition would not be a lot of Old Masters or
first editions or palatial palaces,
No, it would be to supply each of my pairs of pants with its
own set of gallowses.
I can also think of another extravagance with which to
startle all beholders
Which is an attendant with no other duties than to apply
antisunburn lotion to that vulnerable spot you can't
get at yourself either by reaching over or under your
shoulders.
My next goal is one to reach which I should probably have
to sink into debt,
But it would be worth it because it is the development
of a short, hot, harsh, quick-burning, full-of-nicotine
cigarette.
A million dollars could also be well spent in hiring some-
body to invent some better rhymes for wife than rife
and knife and strife,
But I think what I would really do if I had a million would
be to buy a million dollars' worth of books written
by me and then besides having a lot of good books
I could sit back and live on the royalties for the rest of my
life.
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GLOSSINA MORSITANS, OR, THE TSETSE
A Glossina morsitans
bit rich Aunt Betsy.
Tsk tsk, tsetse.
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THE KITTEN
The trouble with a kitten is
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT.
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The trouble with a kitten is
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT.
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SUPPOSE HE THREW IT IN YOUR FACE
Please don't anybody ask me to decide anything, I do not
know a nut from a meg,
Or which came first, the lady or the tiger, or which came
next, the chicken or the egg.
It takes a man of vision
To make a decision,
And my every memory
Is far too dilemmary.
I am, alas, to be reckoned
With the shortstop who can't decide whether to throw
to first or second,
Nor can Idecide whether to put, except after c,
E before i, or i before e.
But where this twilight mind really goes into eclipse
Is in the matter of tips.
I stand stricken before the triple doom,
Whether, and How Much, and Whom.
Tell me, which is more unpleasant,
The look from him who is superior to a tip and gets it,or
from him who isn't and doesn't?
I had rather be discovered playing with my toes in the
Boston Aquarium
Than decide wrongly about an honorarium.
Oh, to dwell forever amid Utopian scenery
Where hotels and restaurants and service stations are operated
by antippable unoffendable machinery.
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REFLEXIONS
ON ICE-BREAKING
Candy
is dandy
But liquor
is quicker.
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LIKE A RAT IN A TRAP
After various guesses at last I've guessed
Why in spring I feel depressed.
When the robins begin to play
Summer is just a step away.
Then hardly the summer has commenced
When autumn is what you're up against,
And once the autumn has muscled in on you
Winter is waiting to begin on you.
So spring isn't spring, but otherwise,
Just a prelude to winter, which I despise.
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YOU AND ME AND P.B. SHELLEY
What is life? Life is stepping down a step or sitting in a
chair,
And it isn't there.
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed
the floor,
It is pulling doors marked PUSH and pushing doors marked
PULL and not noticing notices which say PLEASE USE
OTHER DOOR.
Life is an Easter Parade
In which you whisper, ?No darling if it's a boy we'll name
him after your father!" into the ear of an astonished
stranger because the lady you thought was walking
beside you has stopped to gaze into a window full of
radishes and hot malted lemonade.
It is when you diagnose a sore throat as an unprepared
geography lesson and send your child weeping to
school only to be returned an hour later covered with
spots that are indubitably genuine,
It is a concert with a trombone soloist filling in for Yehudi
Menuhin.
Were it not for frustration and humiliation
I suppose (he human race would get ideas above its station.
Somebody once described Shelley as a beautiful and ineffective
angel beating his luminous wings against the
void in vain,
Which is certainly describing with might and main,
But probably means that we are all brothers under our
pelts,
And Shelley went around pulling doors marked PUSH and
pushing doors marked PULL just like everybody else.
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THE LOUSE
Robert Burns, that gifted souse,
Kindly immortalized the louse,
Who probably won't, when he is master.
Immortalize this poetaster.
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SO THAT'S WHO I REMIND ME OF
When I consider men of golden talents,
I'm delighted, in my introverted way,
To discover, as I'm drawing up the balance,
How much we have in common, I and they.
Like Burns, I have a weakness for the bottle,
Like Shakespeare, little Latin and less Greek;
I bite my fingernails like Aristotle;
Like Thackeray, I have a snobbish streak.
I'm afflicted with the vanity of Byron,
I've inherited the spitefulness of Pope;
Like Petrarch, I'm a sucker for a siren,
Like Milton, I've a tendency to mope.
My spelling is suggestive of a Chaucer;
Like Johnson, well, I do not wish to die
(I also drink my coffee from the saucer);
And if Goldsmith was a parrot, so am I.
Like Villon, 1 have debits by the carload,
Like Swinburne, I'm afraid I need a nurse;
By my dicing is Christopher out-Marlowed,
And I dream as much as Coleridge, only worse.
In comparison with men of golden talents,
I am all a man of talent ought to be;
I resemble every genius in his vice, however heinous
Yet I write so much like me.
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Last-modified: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 18:12:35 GMT