A Satire Anthology

Автор

Carolyn Wells

Год написания книги

2017

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“I’ve a splendid blood-horse, and – a liver
That it jars into torture to trot;
My row-boat’s the gem of the river —
Gout makes every knuckle a knot!
I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome,
But no palate for ménus, no eyes for a dome —
Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home,
When no home but an attic he’d got – he’d got!

“How I longed, in that lonest of garrets,
Where the tiles baked my brains all July,
For ground to grow two pecks of carrots,
Two pigs of my own in a sty,
A rosebush, a little thatched cottage,
Two spoons, love, a basin of pottage!
Now in freestone I sit, and my dotage,
With a woman’s chair empty close by – close by!

“Ah, now, though I sit on a rock,
I have shared one seat with the great;
I have sat – knowing naught of the clock —
On love’s high throne of state;
But the lips that kissed, and the arms that caressed,
To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed,
And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed,
Had they only not come too late – too late!”

    Fitz-Hugh Ludlow.

LIFE IN LACONICS

GIVEN a roof, and a taste for rations,
And you have the key to the “wealth of nations.”

Given a boy, a tree, and a hatchet,
And virtue strives in vain to match it.

Given a pair, a snake, and an apple,
You make the whole world need a chapel.

Given “no cards,” broad views, and a hovel,
You have a realistic novel.

Given symptoms and doctors with potion and pill,
And your heirs will ere long be contesting your will.

That good leads to evil there’s no denying:
If it were not for truth there would be no lying.

“I’m nobody!” should have a hearse;
But then, “I’m somebody!” is worse.

“Folks say,” et cetera! Well, they shouldn’t,
And if they knew you well, they wouldn’t.

When you coddle your life, all its vigor and grace
Shrink away with the whisper, “We’re in the wrong place.”

    Mary Mapes Dodge.

DISTICHES

WISELY a woman prefers to a lover a man who neglects her.
This one may love her some day; some day the lover will not.

There are three species of creatures who, when they seem coming, are going;
When they seem going, they come: Diplomats, women, and crabs.

As the meek beasts in the Garden came flocking for Adam to name them,
Men for a title to-day crawl to the feet of a king.

What is a first love worth except to prepare for a second?
What does the second love bring? Only regret for the first.

    John Hay.

THE POET AND THE CRITICS

IF those who wield the rod forget,
’Tis truly, Quis custodiet?

A certain bard (as bards will do)
Dressed up his poems for review.
His type was plain, his title clear,
His frontispiece by Fourdrinier.
Moreover, he had on the back
A sort of sheepskin zodiac —
A mask, a harp, an owl – in fine,
A neat and “classical” design.
But the in-side? Well, good or bad,
The inside was the best he had.
Much memory, more imitation,
Some accidents of inspiration,
Some essays in that finer fashion
Where fancy takes the place of passion;
And some (of course) more roughly wrought
To catch the advocates of thought.

In the less-crowded age of Anne,