The Book of Humorous Verse
Chapter 78 : [Footnote 6: Magraw, a Gaelic term of endearment, often heard on the baseball fields of

[Footnote 6: Magraw, a Gaelic term of endearment, often heard on the baseball fields of Donnybrook.]

[Footnote 7: These last six words are all that tradition has preserved of the original incantation by means of which Irish rats were rhymed to death. Thereby hangs a good Celtic tale, which I should be glad to tell you in this note; but the publishers say that being prosed to death is as bad as being rhymed to death, and that the readers won't stand for any more.]

LILIES

Lilies, lilies, white lilies and yellow-- Lilies, lilies, purple lilies and golden-- Calla lilies, tiger lilies, lilies of the valley-- Lilies, lilies, lilies-- Bulb, bud and blossom-- What made them lilies?

If they were not lilies they would have to be something else, would they not?

What was it that made them lilies instead of making them violets or roses or geraniums or petunias?

What was it that made you yourself and me myself? What?

Alas! I do not know!

_Don Marquis._

FOR I AM SAD

No usual words can bear the woe I feel, No tralat.i.tions trite give me relief!

O Webster! lend me words to voice my grief Bitter as qua.s.sia, qua.s.s or k.u.mquat peel!

For I am sad ... bound on the cosmic wheel, What mad chthonophagy bids slave and chief Through endless cycles bite the earth like beef, By turns each cannibal and each the meal?

Turn we to nature Webster, and we see Your whidah bird refuse all strobile fruit, Your tragacanth in tears ooze from the tree ...

We hear your flammulated owlets hoot!

Turn we to nature, Webster, and we find Few creatures have a quite contented mind.

Your koulan there, with dyslogistic snort, Will leave his phacoid food on worts to browse, While glactophorous Himalayan cows The knurled kohl-rabi spurn in uncouth sport; No margay climbs margosa trees; the short Gray mullet drink no mulse, nor house In pibcorns when the youth of Wales carouse ...

No tournure doth the toucan's tail contort ...

So I am sad! ... and yet, on Summer eves, When xebecs search the whis.h.i.+ng scree for whelk, And the sharp sorrel lifts obcordate leaves, And cryptogamous plants fulfil the elk, I see the octopus play with his feet, And find within this sadness something sweet.

The thing we like about that poem is its recognition of all the sorrow there is in the universe ... its _unflinching_ recognition, we might say, if we were not afraid of praising our own work too highly ...

combined with its happy ending.

One feels, upon reading it, that, although everything everywhere is very sad, and all wrong, one has only to have patience and after a while everything everywhere will be quite right and very sweet.

No matter how interested one may be in these literary problems, one must cease discussing them at times or one will be late to one's meals.

_Don Marquis._

A LITTLE SWIRL OF VERS LIBRE

NOT COVERED, STRANGE TO SAY, BY THE PENAL CODE

I am numb from world-pain-- I sway most violently as the thoughts course through me, And athwart me, And up and down me-- Thoughts of cosmic matters, Of the mergings of worlds within worlds, And unutterabilities And room-rent, And other tremendously alarming phenomena, Which stab me, Rip me most outrageously; (Without a semblance, mind you, of respect for the Hague Convention's rules governing soul-slitting.) Aye, as with the poniard of the Finite p.r.i.c.king the rainbow-bubble of the Infinite!

(Some figure, that!) (Some little rush of syllables, that!)-- And make me--(are you still whirling at my coat-tails, reader?) Make me--ahem, where was I?--oh, yes--make me, In a sudden, overwhelming gust of soul-shattering rebellion, Fall flat on my face!

_Thomas R. Ybarra._

YOUNG LOCHINVAR

THE TRUE STORY IN BLANK VERSE

Oh! young Lochinvar has come out of the West, Thro' all the wide border his horse has no equal, Having cost him forty-five dollars at the market, Where good nags, fresh from the country, With burrs still in their tails are selling For a song; and save his good broad sword He weapon had none, except a seven-shooter Or two, a pair of bra.s.s knuckles, and an Arkansaw

Toothpick in his boot, so, comparatively speaking, He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone, Because there was no one going his way.

He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for Toll-gates; he swam the Eske River where ford There was none, and saved fifteen cents In ferriage, but lost his pocket-book, containing Seventeen dollars and a half, by the operation.

Ere he alighted at the Netherby mansion He stopped to borrow a dry suit of clothes, And this delayed him considerably, so when He arrived the bride had consented--the gallant Came late--for a laggard in love and a dastard in war Was to wed the fair Ellen, and the guests had a.s.sembled.

So, boldly he entered the Netherby Hall Among bridesmen and kinsmen and brothers and Brothers-in-law and forty or fifty cousins; Then spake the bride's father, his hand on his sword (For the poor craven bridegroom ne'er opened his head)

"Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in anger, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"

"I long wooed your daughter, and she will tell you I have the inside track in the free-for-all For her affections! my suit you denied; but let That pa.s.s, while I tell you, old fellow, that love Swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide, And now I am come with this lost love of mine To lead but one measure, drink one gla.s.s of beer; There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far That would gladly be bride to yours very truly."

The bride kissed the goblet, the knight took it up, He quaffed off the nectar and threw down the mug, Smas.h.i.+ng it into a million pieces, while He remarked that he was the son of a gun From Seven-up and run the Number Nine.

She looked down to blush, but she looked up again For she well understood the wink in his eye; He took her soft hand ere her mother could Interfere, "Now tread we a measure; first four Half right and left; swing," cried young Lochinvar.

One touch to her hand and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall door and the charger Stood near on three legs eating post hay; So light to the croup the fair lady he swung, Then leaped to the saddle before her.

"She is won! we are gone! over bank, bush, and spar, They'll have swift steeds that follow"--but in the

Excitement of the moment he had forgotten To untie the horse, and the poor brute could Only gallop in a little circus around the Hitching-post; so the old gent collared The youth and gave him the awfullest lambasting That was ever heard of on Can.o.bie Lee; So dauntless in war and so daring in love, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

_Unknown._

IMAGISTE LOVE LINES

I love my lady with a deep purple love; She fascinates me like a fly Struggling in a pot of glue.

Her eyes are grey, like twin ash-cans, Just emptied, about which still hovers A dainty mist.

Her disposition is as bright as a ten-cent s.h.i.+ne, Yet her kisses are tender and goulashy.

I love my lady with a deep purple love.

_Unknown._