O my Author, do you hear the Autumn calling? Does its message fail to reach you in your den, Where the ink that once so sluggishly was crawling Courses swiftly through your stylographic pen? 'Tis the season when the editor grows active, When the office-boy looks longingly to you. Won't you give him something novel and attractive To review?
Never mind if you are frivolous or solemn, If you only can be striking and unique, The reviewers will concede you half a column In their literary journals, any week. And 'twill always be your publisher's ambition To provide for the demand that you create, And dispose of a gigantic first edition, While you wait.
O my Author, can't you pull yourself together, Try to expiate the failures of the past, And just ask yourself dispassionately whether You can't give us something better than your last? If you really – if you truly – are a poet, As you fancy – pray forgive my being terse — Don't you think you might occasionally show it In your verse?
THE CRY OF THE AUTHOR
O my Publisher, how dreadfully you bore me! Of your censure I am frankly growing tired. With your diatribes eternally before me, How on earth can I expect to feel inspired? You are orderly, no doubt, and systematic, In that office where recumbent you recline; You would modify your methods in an attic Such as mine.
If you lived a sort of hand-to-mouth existence (Where the mouth found less employment than the hand); If your rhymes would lend your humour no assistance, And your wit assumed a form that never scann'd; If you sat and waited vainly at your table While Calliope declined to give her cues, You would realise how very far from stable Was the Mews!
You would find it quite impossible to labour With the patient perseverance of a drone, While some tactless but enthusiastic neighbour Played a cake walk on a wheezy gramophone, While your peace was so disturbed by constant clatter, That at length you grew accustomed – nay, resigned, To the never-ending victory of Matter Over Mind.
While you batten upon plovers' eggs and claret, In the shelter of some fashionable club, I am starving, very likely, in a garret, Off the street so incorrectly labelled Grub, Where the vintage smacks distinctly of the ink-butt, And the atmosphere is redolent of toil, And there's nothing for the journalist to drink but Midnight oil!
It is useless to solicit inspiration When one isn't in the true poetic mood, When one contemplates the prospect of starvation, And one's little ones are clamouring for food. When one's tongue remains ingloriously tacit, One is forced with some reluctance to admit That, alas! (as Virgil said) Poeta nascit- -Ur, non fit!
Then, my Publisher, be gentle with your poet; Do not treat him with the harshness he deserves, For, in fact, altho' you little seem to know it, You are gradually getting on his nerves. Kindly dam the foaming torrent of your curses, While I ask you, – yes, and pause for a reply, — Are you writing this immortal book of verses, Or am I?
I THE FUMBLER
Gentle Reader, charge your tumbler With anæmic lemonade! Let us toast our fellow-fumbler, Who was surely born, not made. None of all our friends is "dearer" (Costs us more – to be jocose – ); No relation could be nearer, More intensely "close"!
Hear him indistinctly mumbling "Oh, I say, do let me pay!" Watch him in his pocket fumbling, In a dilatory way; Plumbing the unmeasured deeps there, With some muttered vague excuse, For the coinage that he keeps there, But will not produce.
If he joins you in a hansom, You alone provide the fare; Not for all a monarch's ransom Would he pay his modest share. He may fumble with his collar, He may turn his pockets out, He can never find that dollar Which he spoke about!
Cigarettes he sometimes offers, With a sort of old-world grace, But, when you accept them, proffers With surprise, an empty case. Your cigars, instead, he'll snatch, and, With the cunning of the fox, Ask you firmly for a match, and Pocket half your box!
If with him a meal you share, too, You'll discover, when you've dined, That your friend has taken care to Leave his frugal purse behind. "We must sup together later," He remarks, with right good-will, "Pass the Heidsieck, please; and, waiter, Bring my friend the bill!"
At some crowded railway station He comes running up to you, And exclaims with agitation, "Take my ticket, will you, too?" Though his pow'rs of conversation In the train require no spur, To this trifling obligation He will not refer!
When at Bridge you win his money, Do not think it odd or strange If he says, "It's very funny, But I find I've got no change! Do remind me what I owe you, When you see me in the street." Mr. Fumbler, if I know you, We shall never meet!
Fumbler, so serenely fumbling In a pocket with thy thumb, Never by good fortune stumbling On the necessary sum, Cease to make polite pretences, Suited to thy niggard ends, Of dividing the expenses With confiding friends!
Here, we crown thee, fumbling brother, With the fumbler's well-earned wreath, Who would'st rob thine aged mother Of her artificial teeth! We at length are slowly learning That some friendships cost too dear. "Longest worms must have a turning," And our turn is near!
Henceforth, when a cab thou takest, Thou a lonely way must wend; Henceforth, when for food thou achest, Thou must dine without a friend. Thine excuses thou shalt mumble Down some public telephone, And if thou perforce must fumble, Fumble all alone!
II THE BARITONE
In many a boudoir nowadays The baritone's decolleté throat Produces weird unearthly lays, Like some dyspeptic goat Deprived but lately of her young (But not, alas! of either lung).
His low-necked collar fails to show The contours of his manly chest, Since that has fallen far below His "fancy evening vest." Here, too, in picturesque relief, Nestles his crimson handkerchief.
Will no one tell me why he sings Such doleful melancholy lays, Of withered summers, ruined springs, Of happier bygone days, And kindred topics, more or less Designed to harass or depress?
That ballad in his bloated hand Is of the old familiar blend: — A faded flow'r, a maiden, and A "brave kiss" at the end! (The kind of kiss that, for a bet, A man might give a Suffragette.)
(THE BARITONE'S BOUDOIR BALLAD)
Eyes that looked down into mine, With a longing that seemed to say Is it too late, dear heart, to wait For the dawn of a brighter day? Is it too late to laugh at fate? See how the teardrops start! Can we not weather the tempest together, Dear Heart, Dear Heart?
Lips that I pressed to my own, As I gazed at her yielding form, — Turned with a groan, and then hastened alone Into the teeth of the Storm! Long, long ago! Still the winds blow! Far have we drifted apart! You live with Mother, and I love – another! Dear Heart, Dear Heart!
At times some drinking-song inspires Our hero to a vocal burst, Until his audience, too, acquires The most prodigious thirst. And nobody would ever think That milk was his peculiar drink!
What spacious days his song recalls, When each monastic brotherhood Could brew, within its private walls, A vintage just as good As that which restaurants purvey As "rare old Tawny Port" to-day!
(THE BARITONE'S DRINKING SONG)
The Abbot he sits, as his rank befits, With a bottle at either knee, And he smacks his lips as he slowly sips At his beaker of Malvoisie. Sing Ho! Ho! Ho! Let the red wine flow! Let the sack flow fast and free! His heart it grows merry on negus and sherry, And never a care has he! Ho! Ho! (Ora pro nobis!) Sing Ho! for the Malvoisie!
In cellar cool, on a highbacked stool, The Friar he sits him down, With the door tight shut, and an unbroached butt Where the ale flows clear and brown. Sing Ha! Sing Hi! Till the cask runs dry, His spirits shall never fail! For no one is dryer than Francis the Friar, When getting "outside the pail!" Ho! Ho! (Benedicimus!) Sing Ho! for the nutbrown ale!
The Monk sits there, in his cell so bare, And he lowers his tonsured head, As he lifts the lid of the tankard hid 'Neath the straw of his trestle bed. Sing Ho! Sink Hey! From the break of day Till the vesper-bell rings clear, Of grave he makes merry and hastens to bury His cares in the butt'rybier! Ho! Ho! (Pax Omnibuscum!) Sing Ho! for the buttery beer!
Oh, find me some secure retreat, Some Paradise for stricken souls, Where amateurs no longer bleat Their feeble baracoles, From lungs that are so oddly placed Where other people keep their waist;
Where public taste has quite outgrown The faculty for being bored By each anæmic baritone Who murders "The Lost Chord," And singers, as a body, are Cursed with a permanent catarrh!
