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A Satire Anthology
Автор
Год написания книги
2017
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“There are no birds in last year’s nests?”
Richard Kendall Munkittrick.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
IN letters large upon the frame,
That visitors might see,
The painter placed his humble name:
O’Callaghan McGee.
And from Beersheba unto Dan,
The critics, with a nod,
Exclaimed: “This painting Irishman
Adores his native sod.
“His stout heart’s patriotic flame
There’s naught on earth can quell;
He takes no wild romantic name
To make his pictures sell.”
Then poets praise, in sonnets neat,
His stroke so bold and free;
No parlor wall was thought complete
That hadn’t a McGee.
All patriots before McGee
Threw lavishly their gold;
His works in the Academy
Were very quickly sold.
His “Digging Clams at Barnegat,”
His “When the Morning Smiled,”
His “Seven Miles from Ararat,”
His “Portrait of a Child,”
Were purchased in a single day,
And lauded as divine.
…
That night as in his atelier
The artist sipped his wine,
And looked upon his gilded frames,
He grinned from ear to ear:
“They little think my real name’s
V. Stuyvesant De Vere!”
Richard Kendall Munkittrick.
WED
FOR these white arms about my neck —
For the dainty room, with its ordered grace —
For my snowy linen without a fleck —
For the tender charm of this uplift face —
For the softened light and the homelike air —
The low, luxurious cannel fire —
The padded ease of my chosen chair —
The devoted love that discounts desire —
I sometimes think, when twelve is struck
By the clock on the mantel, tinkling clear,
I would take – and thank the gods for the luck —
One single hour with the boys and the beer,
Where the sawdust-scent of a cheap saloon
Is mingled with malt; where each man smokes;
Where they sing the street-songs out of tune,
Talk Art, and bandy ephemeral jokes.
By Jove, I do! And all the time
I know not a man that is there to-night,
But would barter his brains to be where I’m —
And I’m well aware that the beggars are right.
H. C. Bunner.
ATLANTIC CITY
O CITY that is not a city, unworthy the prefix Atlantic,
Forlornest of watering-places, and thoroughly Philadelphian!
In thy despite I sing, with a bitter and deep detestation —
A detestation born of a direful and dinnerless evening,
Spent in thy precincts unhallowed – an evening, I trust, may recur not.
Never till then did I know what was meant by the word God-forsaken:
Thou its betokening hast taught me, being the chiefest example.
Thou art the scorned of the gods; thy sand from their sandals is shaken;
Thee have they left in their wrath to thy uninteresting extensiveness,
Barren, and bleak, and big; a wild aggregation of barracks,
Miscalled hotels, and of dovecotes denominate cottages;
A confusion of ugly girls, of sand, and of health-bearing breezes,
With one unending plank-walk for a true Philadelphia “attraction.”
City ambitiously named, why, with inducements delusive,
Is the un-Philadelphian stranger lured to thy desert pretentious?
’Tis not alone that thy avenues, broad and unpaved and unending,
Reecho yet with the obsolete music of “Pinafore,”
Whistled in various keys by the rather too numerous negro;
’Tis not alone that Propriety – Propriety too Philadelphian —
Richard Kendall Munkittrick.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
IN letters large upon the frame,
That visitors might see,
The painter placed his humble name:
O’Callaghan McGee.
And from Beersheba unto Dan,
The critics, with a nod,
Exclaimed: “This painting Irishman
Adores his native sod.
“His stout heart’s patriotic flame
There’s naught on earth can quell;
He takes no wild romantic name
To make his pictures sell.”
Then poets praise, in sonnets neat,
His stroke so bold and free;
No parlor wall was thought complete
That hadn’t a McGee.
All patriots before McGee
Threw lavishly their gold;
His works in the Academy
Were very quickly sold.
His “Digging Clams at Barnegat,”
His “When the Morning Smiled,”
His “Seven Miles from Ararat,”
His “Portrait of a Child,”
Were purchased in a single day,
And lauded as divine.
…
That night as in his atelier
The artist sipped his wine,
And looked upon his gilded frames,
He grinned from ear to ear:
“They little think my real name’s
V. Stuyvesant De Vere!”
Richard Kendall Munkittrick.
WED
FOR these white arms about my neck —
For the dainty room, with its ordered grace —
For my snowy linen without a fleck —
For the tender charm of this uplift face —
For the softened light and the homelike air —
The low, luxurious cannel fire —
The padded ease of my chosen chair —
The devoted love that discounts desire —
I sometimes think, when twelve is struck
By the clock on the mantel, tinkling clear,
I would take – and thank the gods for the luck —
One single hour with the boys and the beer,
Where the sawdust-scent of a cheap saloon
Is mingled with malt; where each man smokes;
Where they sing the street-songs out of tune,
Talk Art, and bandy ephemeral jokes.
By Jove, I do! And all the time
I know not a man that is there to-night,
But would barter his brains to be where I’m —
And I’m well aware that the beggars are right.
H. C. Bunner.
ATLANTIC CITY
O CITY that is not a city, unworthy the prefix Atlantic,
Forlornest of watering-places, and thoroughly Philadelphian!
In thy despite I sing, with a bitter and deep detestation —
A detestation born of a direful and dinnerless evening,
Spent in thy precincts unhallowed – an evening, I trust, may recur not.
Never till then did I know what was meant by the word God-forsaken:
Thou its betokening hast taught me, being the chiefest example.
Thou art the scorned of the gods; thy sand from their sandals is shaken;
Thee have they left in their wrath to thy uninteresting extensiveness,
Barren, and bleak, and big; a wild aggregation of barracks,
Miscalled hotels, and of dovecotes denominate cottages;
A confusion of ugly girls, of sand, and of health-bearing breezes,
With one unending plank-walk for a true Philadelphia “attraction.”
City ambitiously named, why, with inducements delusive,
Is the un-Philadelphian stranger lured to thy desert pretentious?
’Tis not alone that thy avenues, broad and unpaved and unending,
Reecho yet with the obsolete music of “Pinafore,”
Whistled in various keys by the rather too numerous negro;
’Tis not alone that Propriety – Propriety too Philadelphian —
Другие электронные книги автора Carolyn Wells
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