Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
SOMETHING
ELSE AGAIN
_By_
FRANKLIN P. ADAMS
_Author of_
"_By and Large_," "_In Other Words_,"
"_Tobogganing on Parnassus_,"
"_Weights and Measures_,"
_Etc._
[Illustration]
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK LONDON
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920.
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
To MONTAGUE GLASS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author wishes to thank the _New York Tribune_,
_Life_, _Harper's Magazine_, _Collier's Weekly_, and _The Home
Sector_, for their kind permission to include in this
volume material which has appeared in their pages.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Present Imperative 3
The Doughboy's Horace 5
From: Horace To: Phyllis 7
Advising Chloe 8
To an Aged Cut-up I 9
II 10
His Monument 11
Glycera Rediviva! 12
On a Wine of Horace's 13
"What Flavour?" 14
The Stalling of Q. H. F. 15
On the Flight of Time 16
The Last Laugh 17
Again Endorsing the Lady I 19
II 20
Propertius's Bid for Immortality 21
A Lament 23
Bon Voyage--and Vice Versa 24
Fragment 25
On the Uses of Adversity 26
After Hearing "Robin Hood" 27
Maud Muller Mutatur 28
The Carlyles 31
If Amy Lowell Had Been James Whitcomb Riley 35
If the Advertising Man Had Been Gilbert 37
If the Advertising Man Had Been Praed, or Locker 39
Georgie Porgie 40
On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders 41
To a Vers Librist 43
How Do You Tackle Your Work? 45
Recuerdo 48
On Tradition 51
Unshackled Thoughts on Chivalry, Romance, Adventure, Etc. 52
Results Ridiculous 53
Regarding (1) the U. S. and (2) New York 54
Broadmindedness 55
The Jazzy Bard 56
Lines on and from "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" 57
Thoughts in a Far Country 58
When You Meet a Man from Your Own Home Town 59
The Shepherd's Resolution 61
"It Was a Famous Victory" 62
On Profiteering 63
Despite 64
The Return of the Soldier 65
"I Remember, I Remember" 66
The Higher Education 68
War and Peace 69
Fifty-Fifty 70
"So Shines a Good Deed in a Naughty World" 71
Vain Words 72
On the Importance of Being Earnest 73
It Happens in the B. R. Families 74
Abelard and Heloise 77
Lines Written on the Sunny Side of Frankfort Street 79
Fifty-Fifty 80
To Myrtilla 81
A Psalm of Labouring Life 82
Ballade of Ancient Acts 84
To a Prospective Cook 85
Variation on a Theme 86
"Such Stuff as Dreams" 88
The Ballad of Justifiable Homicide 89
The Ballad of the Murdered Merchant 90
A Gotham Garden of Verses 92
Lines on Reading Frank J. Wilstach's "A Dictionary of Similes" 94
The Dictaphone Bard 95
The Comfort of Obscurity 97
Ballade of the Traffickers 98
To W. Hohenzollern, on Discontinuing The Conning Tower 100
To W. Hohenzollern, on Resuming The Conning Tower 103
Thoughts on the Cosmos 105
On Environment 106
The Ballad of the Thoughtless Waiter 107
Rus Vs. Urbs 109
"I'm Out of the Army Now" 110
"Oh Man!" 112
An Ode in Time of Inauguration 113
What the Copy Desk Might Have Done 124
Song of Synthetic Virility 133
SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN
Present Imperative
Horace: Book I, Ode 11
_"Tu ne quaesieris--scire nefas--quem mihi; quem tibi----"_
AD LEUCONOEN
Nay, query not, Leuconoe, the finish of the fable;
Eliminate the worry as to what the years may hoard!
You only waste your time upon the Babylonian Table--
(Slang for the Ouija board).
And as to whether Jupiter, the final, unsurpassed one,
May add a lot of winters to our portion here below,
Or this impinging season is to be our very last one--
Really, I'd hate to know.
Apply yourself to wisdom! Sweep the floor and wash the dishes,
Nor dream about the things you'll do in 1928!
My counsel is to cease to sit and yearn about your wishes,
Cursing the throws of Fate.
My! how I have been chattering on matters sad and pleasant!
(Endure with me a moment while I polish off a rhyme).
If I were you, I think, I'd bother only with the present--
Now is the only time.
The Doughboy's Horace
Horace: Book III, Ode 9
"Donec eram gratus tibi----"
HORACE, PVT. ----TH INFANTRY, A. E. F., WRITES:
While I was fussing you at home
You put the notion in my dome
That I was the Molasses Kid.
I batted strong. I'll say I did.
LYDIA, ANYBURG, U. S. A., WRITES:
While you were fussing me alone
To other boys my heart was stone.
When I was all that you could see
No girl had anything on me.
HORACE:
Well, say, I'm having some romance
With one Babette, of Northern France.
If that girl gave me the command
I'd dance a jig in No Man's Land.
LYDIA:
I, too, have got a young affair
With Charley--say, that boy is _there_!
I'd just as soon go out and die
If I thought it'd please that guy.
HORACE:
Suppose I can this foreign wren
And start things up with you again?
Suppose I promise to be good?
I'd love you, Lyd. I'll say I would.
LYDIA:
Though Charley's good and handsome--_oh_, boy!
And you're a stormy, fickle doughboy,
Go give the Hun his final whack,
And I'll marry you when you come back.
From: Horace
To: Phyllis
Subject: Invitation
Book IV, Ode 11
"_Est mihi nonum superantis annum----_"
Phyllis, I've a jar of wine,
(Alban, B. C. 49),
Parsley wreaths, and, for your tresses,
Ivy that your beauty blesses.
Shines my house with silverware;
Frondage decks the altar stair--
Sacred vervain, a device
For a lambkin's sacrifice.
Up and down the household stairs
What a festival prepares!
Everybody's superintending--
See the sooty smoke ascending!
What, you ask me, is the date
Of the day we celebrate?
13th April, month of Venus--
Birthday of my boss, Maecenas.
Let me, Phyllis, say a word
Touching Telephus, a bird
Ranking far too high above you;
(And the loafer doesn't love you).
Lessons, Phyllie, may be learned
From Phaeton--how he was burned!
And recall Bellerophon was
One equestrian who thrown was.
Phyllis, of my loves the last,
My philandering days are past.
Sing you, in your clear contralto,
Songs I write for the rialto.
Advising Chloe
Horace: Book I, Ode 23
_"Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloe----"_
Why shun me, my Chloe? Nor pistol nor bowie
Is mine with intention to kill.
And yet like a llama you run to your mamma;
You tremble as though you were ill.
No lion to rend you, no tiger to end you,
I'm tame as a bird in a cage.
That counsel maternal can run for _The Journal_--
You get me, I guess.... You're of age.
To An Aged Cut-up
Horace: Book III, Ode 15
I
"_Uxor pauperis Ibyci,
Tandem nequitiae fige modum tuae----_"
IN CHLORIN
Dear Mrs. Ibycus, accept a little sound advice,
Your manners and your speech are over-bold;
To chase around the sporty way you do is far from nice;
Believe me, darling, you are growing old.
Now Pholoe may fool around (she dances like a doe!)
A debutante has got to think of men;
But you were twenty-seven over thirty years ago--
You ought to be asleep at half-past ten.
O Chloris, cut the ragging and the roses and the rum--
Delete the drink, or better, chop the booze!
Go buy a skein of yarn and make the knitting needles hum,
And imitate the art of Sister Suse.
II
Chloris, lay off the flapper stuff;
What's fit for Pholoe, a fluff,
Is not for Ibycus's wife--
A woman at your time of life!
Ignore, old dame, such pleasures as
The shimmy and "the Bacchus Jazz";
Your presence with the maidens jars--
You are the cloud that dims the stars.
Your daughter Pholoe may stay
Out nights upon the Appian Way;
Her love for Nothus, as you know,
Makes her as playful as a doe.
No jazz for you, no jars of wine,
No rose that blooms incarnadine.
For one thing only are you fit:
Buy some Lucerian wool--and knit!
His Monument
Horace: Book III, Ode 30
"_Exegi monumentum aere perennius----_"
The monument that I have built is durable as brass,
And loftier than the Pyramids which mock the years that pass.
Nor blizzard can destroy it, nor furious rain corrode--
Remember, I'm the bard that built the first Horatian ode.
I shall not altogether die; a part of me's immortal.
A part of me shall never pass the mortuary portal;
And when I die my fame shall stand the nitric test of time--
The fame of me of lowly birth, who built the lofty rhyme!
Ay, fame shall be my portion when no trace there is of me,
For I first made AEolian songs the songs of Italy.
Accept I pray, Melpomene, my modest meed of praise,
And crown my thinning, graying locks with wreaths of Delphic bays!
Glycera Rediviva!
Horace: Book I, Ode 19
"_Mater saeva Cupidinum_"
Venus, the cruel mother of
The Cupids (symbolising Love),
Bids me to muse upon and sigh
For things to which I've said "Good-bye!"
Believe me or believe me not,
I give this Glycera girl a lot:
Pure Parian marble are her arms--
And she has eighty other charms.
Venus has left her Cyprus home
And will not let me pull a pome
About the Parthians, fierce and rough,
The Scythian war, and all that stuff.
Set up, O slaves, a verdant shrine!
Uncork a quart of last year's wine!
Place incense here, and here verbenas,
And watch me while I jolly Venus!
On a Wine of Horace's
What time I read your mighty line,
O Mr. Q. Horatius Flaccus,
In praise of many an ancient wine--
You twanged a wicked lyre to Bacchus!--
I wondered, like a Yankee hick,
If that old stuff contained a kick.
So when upon a Paris card
I glimpsed Falernian, I said: "Waiter,
I'll emulate that ancient bard,
And pass upon his merits later."
Professor Mendell, _quelque_ sport,
Suggested that we split a quart.
O Flaccus, ere I ceased to drink
Three glasses and a pair of highballs,
I could not talk; I could not think;
For I was pickled to the eyeballs.
If you sopped up Falernian wine
How did you ever write a line?
"What Flavour?"
Horace: Book III, Ode 13
_"O fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro----"_
Worthy of flowers and syrups sweet,
O fountain of Bandusian onyx,
To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat
Mix with the sizz of thy carbonics.
A kid whose budding horns portend
A life of love and war--but vainly!
For thee his sanguine life shall end--
He'll spill his blood, to put it plainly.
And never shalt thou feel the heat
That blazes in the days of Sirius,
But men shall quaff thy soda sweet,
And girls imbibe thy drinks delirious.
Fountain whose dulcet cool I sing,
Be thou immortal by this Ode (a
Not wholly meretricious thing),
Bandusian fount of ice-cream soda!
The Stalling of Q. H. F.
Horace: Epode 14
_"Mollis inertia cur tantam diffuderit imis"_
Maecenas, you fret me, you worry me
Demanding I turn out a rhyme;
Insisting on reasons, you hurry me;
You want my iambics on time.
You say my ambition's diminishing;
You ask why my poem's not done.
The god it is keeps me from finishing
The stuff I've begun.
Be not so persistent, so clamorous.
Anacreon burned with a flame
Candescently, crescently amorous.
You rascal, you're doing the same!
Was no fairer the flame that burned Ilium.
Cheer up, you're a fortunate scamp,
... Consider avuncular William
And Phryne, the vamp.
On the Flight of Time
Horace: Book I, Ode 2
"_Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi,
quem tibi_"
AD LEUCONOEN
Look not, Leuconoe, into the future;
Seek not to find what the Answer may be;
Let no Chaldean clairvoyant compute your
Time of existence.... It irritates me!
Better to bear what may happen soever
Patiently, playing it through like a sport,
Whether the end of your breathing is Never,
Or, as is likely, your time will be short.
This is the angle, the true situation;
Get me, I pray, for I'm putting you hep:
While I've been fooling with versification
Time has been flying.... Both gates!
Watch your step!
The Last Laugh
Horace: Epode 15
_"Nox erat et caelo fulgebat Luna sereno----"_
"How sweet the moonlight sleeps," I quoted,
"Upon this bank!" that starry night--
The night you vowed you'd be devoted--
I'll tell the world you held me tight.
The night you said until Orion
Should cease to whip the wintry sea,
Until the lamb should love the lion,
You would, you swore, be all for me.
Some day, Neaera, you'll be sorry.
No mollycoddle swain am I.
I shall not sit and pine, by gorry!
Because you're with some other guy!
No, I shall turn my predilection
Upon some truer, fairer Jane;
And all your prayer and genuflexion
For my return shall be in vain.
And as for _you_, who choose to sneer, O,
Though deals in lands and stocks you swing,
Though handsome as a movie hero,
Though wise you are--and everything;
Yet, when the loss of her you're mourning,
How I shall laugh at all your woe!
How I'll remind you of this warning,
And laugh, "Ha! ha! I told you so!"
Again Endorsing the Lady