To an Aged Cut-Up, II
Chloris lay off the flapper stuff;
What's fit for Pholoë, a fluff,
Is not for Ibycus's wife--
A woman at your time of life!
Ignore, old dame, such pleasures as
The shimmy and "the Bacchus Jazz";
Your presence with the maidens jars--
You are the cloud that dims the stars.
Your daughter Pholoë may stay
Out nights on the Appian Way;
her love for Nothus, as you know,
Makes her as playful as a doe.
No jazz for you, no jars of wine,
No rose that blooms incarnadine.
For one thing only you are fit:
Buy some Lucerian wool--and knit!
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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To a Prospective Cook
Curly locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be ours?
Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet weed the flowers,
But stand in the kitchen and cook a fine meal,
And ride every night in an automobile.
Curly Locks, Curly Locks, come to us soon!
Thou needest not to rise until mid-afternoon;
Thou mayest be Croatian, Armenian, or Greek;
Thy guerdon shall be what thy askest per week.
Curly Locks, Curly Locks, give us a chance!
Thou shalt not wash windows, nor iron my pants.
Oh, come to the cosiest of seven-room bowers,
Curly Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be ours?
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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A Word For It
'Scorn not the sonnet.' Well, I reckon not,
I would not scorn a rondeau, villanelle,
Ballade, sestina, triolet, rondel,
Or e'en a quatrain, humble and forgot,
An so it made my Pegasus to trot
His morning lap what time he heard the bell;
An so it made the poem stuff to jell-
To mix a met.-an so it boil'd the pot.
Oh, sweet set form that varies not a bit!
I taste thy joy, not quite unknown to Keats.
'Scorn? ' Nay, I love thy fine symmetric
grace.
In sonnets one knows always where to quit,
Unlike in other poems where one cheats
And strings it out to fill the yawning
space.
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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The Stalling of Q.H.F.
Horace: Epode 14
"Mollis inertia cur tantam diffuderit imis"
Maecenas, you fret me, you worry me
Demanding I turn out a rhyme;
Insisting on reasons, you hurry me;
You want my Iambics on time.
You say my ambition's diminishing;
You ask why my poem's not done.
The god it is keeps me from finishing
The stuff I've begun.
Be not so persistent, so clamorous.
Anacreon burned with a flame
Candescently, crescently amorous.
You rascal, you're doing the same!
Was no fairer the flame that burned Ilium.
Cheer up, you're a fortunate scamp,
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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And Yet It Is A Gentle Art
(Parody is a genre frowned upon by your professors
of literature... And yet it is a gentle art-
'The Point of View' in May _Scribner's_.)
A sweet disorder in the verse
That never looks behind
Shall profit not who steals my purse,
Let joy be unconfined!
How vainly men themselves amaze!
The stars began to blink,
An art that there were few to praise,
Nor any dropp to drink.
O sleep, it is a blessed thing
Which I must ne'er enjoy!
There never was a fairer spring
Than when I was a boy.
One fond embrace and then we part!
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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Glycera Rediviva
Horace: Book I, Ode 19
"Mater sæva Cupidinum"
Venus, the cruel mother of
The Cupids (symbolising Love),
Bids me to muse upon and sigh
For things to which I've said "Good-bye!"
Believe me or believe me not,
I give this Glycera girl a lot:
Pure Parian marble are her arms--
And she has eighty other charms.
Venus has left her Cyprus home
And will not let me pull a pome
About the Parthians, fierce and rough,
The Scythian war, and all that stuff.
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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On the Flight of Time
Horace: Book I, Ode 2
"Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem, mihi, quem tibi"
AD LEUCONOEN
Look not, Leuconoë, into the future;
Seek not to find what the answer may be;
Let no Chaldean clairvoyant compute your
Time of existence. . . . It irritates me!
Better to bear whatever may happen soever
Patiently, playing it through like a sport,
Whether the end of your breathing is Never,
Or, as is likely, your time will be short.
This is the angle, the true situation;
Get me, I pray, for I'm putting you hep:
While I've been fooling with versification
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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On a Wine of Horace's
What time I read your mighty line,
O Mr. Q. Horatius Flaccus,
In praise of many an ancient wine--
You twanged a wickid lyric to Bacchus!--
I wondered, like a Yankee hick,
If that old stuff contained a kick.
So when upon a Paris card
I glimpsed a Falernian, I said: "Waiter,
I'll emulate that ancient bard,
And pass upon his merits later."
Professor Mendell, quelque sport,
Suggested that we split a quart.
O Flaccus, ere I ceased to drink
Three glasses and a pair of highballs,
I could not talk, I could not think;
For I was pickled to the eyeballs.
If you sopped up Falernian wine
How did you ever write a line?
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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Again Endorsing the Lady, II
I thought that I was wholly free,
That I had Love upon the shelf;
"Hereafter," I declared in glee,
"I'll have my evenings to myself."
How can such mortal beauty live?
(Ah, Jove, thine errings I forgive!)
Her tresses pale the sunlight's gold;
Her hands are featly formed and taper;
Her--well, the rest ought not be told
In any modest family paper.
Fair as Ischomache, and bright
As Brimo. Quæque queen is right.
O goddesses of long ago,
A shepherd called ye sweet and slender.
He saw ye, so he ought to know;
But sooth to her ye must surrender.
O may a million years not trace
A single line upon that face!
poem by Franklin P. Adams
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To a Light Houskeeper
(Who hitches laundering articles to the curtain
string and pastes them on the pane.)
Lady, thou that livest
Just across the way,
If a hang thou givest
What the people say,
If a cuss thou carest
What a poet thinks-
Hearken, if thou darest,
Most immodest minx!
Though thy gloves thou tiest,
To the curtain string,
Though the things thou driest
Gird me while I sing,
Hankies and inventions
Of the lacy tribe-
Things I may not mention,
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poem by Franklin P. Adams
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