Bon Voyage - And Vice Versa
Propertius: Elegy VIII, Part 1
"Tune igitur demens nec te mea cura moratur?---"
O Cynthia, hast thou lost thy mind?
Have I no claim on thine affection?
Dost love the chill Illyrian wind
With something passing predilection?
And is thy friend--whoe'er he be--
The kind to take the place of me?
Ah, canst thou bear the surging deep?
Canst thou endure the hard ship's-mattress?
For scant will be thy hours of sleep
From Staten Island to Cape Hatt'ras;
And won't thy fairy feet be froze
With treading on the foreign snows?
I hope that doubly blows the gale,
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Ballad of the Murdered Merchant
All stark and cold the merchant lay,
All cold and stark lay he.
And who hath killed the fair merchant?
Now tell the truth to me.
Oh, I have killed this fair merchant
Will never again draw breath;
Oh, I have made this fair merchant
To come unto his death.
Oh, why hast thou killed this fair merchant
Whose corpse I now behold?
And why hast caused this man to lie
In death all stark and cold?
Oh, I have killed this fair merchant
Whose kith and kin make moan,
For that he hath stolen my precious time
When he useth the telephone.
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Abelard and Heloïse
["There are so many things I want to talk to you about." Abelard probably said to Heloïse, "but how can I when I can only think about kissing you?" --KATHARINE LANE in the Evening Mail.]
Said Abelard to Heloïse:
"Your tresses blowing in the breeze
Enchant my soul; your cheek allures;
I never knew such lips as yours."
Said Heloïse to Abelard:
"I know that it is cruel, hard,
To make you fold your yearning arms
And think of things besides my charms."
Said Abelard to Heloïse:
"Pray, lets discuss the Portuguese;
Their status in the League of Nations.
. . . . Come, slip me seven osculations.
"The Fourteen Points," said Heloïse,
"Are pure Woodrovian fallacies."
Said Abelard: "Ten times fourteen
The points you have, O beaucoup queen!"
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Dictaphone Bard
[And here is a suggestion: Did you ever try dictating your stories or articles to the dictaphone for the first draft? I would be glad to have you come down and make the experiment.--From a shorthand reporter's circular letter.]
(As "The Ballad of the Tempest" would have to issue from the dictaphone to the stenographer)
We were crowded in the cabin comma
Not a soul would dare to sleep dash comma
It was midnight on the waters comma
And a storm was on the deep period
Apostrophe Tis a fearful thing in capital Winter
To be shattered by the blast comma
And to hear the rattling trumpet
Thunder colon quote capital Cut away the mast exclamation point close quote
So we shuddered there in silence comma dash
For the stoutest held his breath comma
While the hungry sea was roaring comma
And the breakers talked with capital Death period
As thus we sat in darkness comma
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Propertius's Bid For Immortality
Horace: Book III, Ode 3
"Carminis interea nostri redæmus in orbem---"
Let us return, then, for a time,
To our accustomed round of rhyme;
And let my songs' familiar art
Not fail to move my lady's heart.
They say that Orpheus with his lute
Had power to tame the wildest brute;
That "Vatiations on a Theme"
Of his would stay the swiftest stream.
They say that by the minstrel's song
Cithæron's rocks were moved along
To Thebes, where, as you may recall,
They formed themselves to frame a wall.
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Ballad of Baseball Burdens
The burden of hard hitting. Slug away
Like Honus Wagner or like Tyrus Cobb.
Else fandom shouteth: "Who said you could play?
Back to the jasper league, you minor slob!"
Swat, hit, connect, line out, goet on the job.
Else you shall feel the brunt of fandom's ire
Biff, bang it, clout it, hit it on the knob -
This is the end of every fan's desire.
The burden of good pitching. Curved or straight.
Or in or out, or haply up or down,
To puzzle him that standeth by the plate,
To lessen, so to speak, his bat-renown:
Like Christy Mathewson or Miner Brown,
So pitch that every man can but admire
And offer you the freedom of the town -
This is the end of every fan's desire.
The burden of loud cheering. O the sounds!
The tumult and the shouting from the throats
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
To W. Hohenzollern, on Discontinuing The Conning Tower
William, it was, I think, three years ago--
As I recall, one cool October morning--
(You have The Tribune files; I think they'll show
I gave you warning).
I said, in well-selected words and terse,
In phrases balanced, yet replete with power,
That I should cease to pen the prose and verse
Known as The Tower
That I should stop this Labyrinth of Light--
Though stopping make the planet leaden-hearted--
Unless you stop the well-known Schrecklichkeit
Your nation started.
I printed it in type that you could read;
My paragraphs were thewed, my rhymes were sinewed.
You paid, I judge from what ensued, no heed . . .
The war continued.
And though my lines with fortitude were fraught,
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Advice
AD ARIUSTUM FUSCUM
I
Horace: Book I, Ode 22.
'_Integer vitae sclerisque purus_'-
_Take it from me: A guy who's square,
His chances always are the best.
I'm in the know, for I've been there,
And that's no ancient Roman jest._
What time he hits the hay to rest
There's nothing on his mind but hair,
No javelin upon his chest-
_Take it from me, a guy who's square._
There's nothing that can throw a scare
Into the contents of his vest;
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders
WITH BOWS TO KEATS AND KEITH'S
["The World's Most Famous Shoulders"]
Then I felt like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent upon a peak in Darien."
"BEE" PALMER has taken the raw human--all too human--stuff of the underworld, with its sighs of sadness and regret, its mad merriment, its swift blaze of passion, its turbulent dances, its outlaw music, its songs of the social bandit, and made a new art product of the theatre. She is to the sources of jazz and the blues what François Villon was to the wild life of Paris. Both have found exquisite blossoms of art in the sector of life most removed from the concert room and the boudoir, and their harvest has the vigour, the resolute life, the stimulating quality, the indelible impress of daredevil, care-free, do-as-you-please lives of the picturesque men and women who defy convention. --From Keith's Press Agent.
Much have I travell'd in the realms of jazz,
And many goodly arms and shoulders seen
Quiver and Quake--if you know what I mean;
I've seen a lot, as everybody has.
Some plaudits got, while others got the razz.
But when I saw Bee Palmer, shimmy queen,
I shook--in sympathy--my troubled bean,
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Variation on a Theme
June 30th, 1919
Notably fond of music, I dote on a
clearer tone
Than ever was blared by a bugle or zoomed
by a saxophone;
And the sound that opens the gates for me of
a Paradise revealed
Is something akin to the note revered by the
blesséd Eugene Field,
Who sang in pellucid phrasing that I perfectly
will recall
Of the clink of the ice in the pitcher that the
boy brings up the hall.
But sweeter to me than the sparrow's song or
the goose's autumn honks
Is the sound of the ice in the shaker as the
barkeeper mixes a Bronx.
Between the dark and the daylight, when I'm
[...] Read more
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!