A Parody Anthology

THE JAM-POT

THE Jam-pot – tender thought!I grabbed it – so did you."What wonder while we foughtTogether that it flewIn shivers?" you retort.You should have loosed your holdOne moment – checked your fist.But, as it was, too boldYou grappled and you missed.More plainly – you were sold."Well, neither of us sharedThe dainty." That your plea?"Well, neither of us cared,"I answer… "Let me see.How have your trousers fared?"Rudyard Kipling.

IMITATION OF ROBERT BROWNING

BIRTHDAYS? yes, in a general way;For the most if not for the best of men.You were born (I suppose) on a certain day,So was I; or perhaps in the night, what then?Only this: or at least, if moreYou must know, not think it, and learn, not speak;There is truth to be found on the unknown shore,And many will find where few will seek.For many are called and few are chosen,And the few grow many as ages lapse.But when will the many grow few; what dozenIs fused into one by Time's hammer-taps?A bare brown stone in a babbling brook, —It was wanton to hurl it there, you say, —And the moss, which clung in the sheltered nook(Yet the stream runs cooler) is washed away.That begs the question; many a praterThinks such a suggestion a sound "stop thief!"Which, may I ask, do you think the greater,Sergeant-at-arms or a Robber Chief?And if it were not so? Still you doubt?Ah! yours is a birthday indeed, if so.That were something to write a poem about,If one thought a little. I only know.P. SThere's a Me Society down at Cambridge,Where my works, cum notis variorum,Are talked about; well, I require the same bridgeThat Euclid took toll at as Asinorum.And, as they have got through several dittiesI thought were as stiff as a brick-built wall,I've composed the above, and a stiff one it is,A bridge to stop asses at, once for all.J. K. Stephen.

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

(From her Point of View)WHEN I had firmly answered "No,"And he allowed that that was so,I really thought I should be freeFor good and all from Mr. B.,And that he would soberly acquiesce.I said that it would be discreetThat for awhile we should not meet;I promised that I would always feelA kindly interest in his weal;I thanked him for his amorous zeal;In short, I said all I could but "yes."I said what I'm accustomed to;I acted as I always do.I promised he should find in meA friend, – a sister, if that might be;But he was still dissatisfied.He certainly was most polite;He said exactly what was right,He acted very properly,Except indeed for this, that heinsisted on inviting meTo come with him for "one more last ride."A little while in doubt I stood:A ride, no doubt, would do me good;I had a habit and a hatExtremely well worth looking at;The weather was distinctly fine.My horse, too, wanted exercise,And time, when one is riding, flies;Besides, it really seemed, you see,The only way of ridding meOf pertinacious Mr. B.;So my head I graciously incline.I won't say much of what happened next;I own I was extremely vexed.Indeed I should have been aghastIf any one had seen what passed;But nobody need ever knowThat, as I leaned forward to stir the fire,He advanced before I could well retire;And I suddenly felt, to my great alarm,The grasp of a warm, unlicensed arm,An embrace in which I found no charm;I was awfully glad when he let me go.Then we began to ride; my steedWas rather fresh, too fresh indeed,And at first I thought of little, saveThe way to escape an early grave,As the dust rose up on either side.My stern companion jogged alongOn a brown old cob both broad and strong.He looked as he does when he's writing verse,Or endeavoring not to swear and curse,Or wondering where he has left his purse;Indeed it was a sombre ride.I spoke of the weather to Mr. B.,But he neither listened nor spoke to me.I praised his horse, and I smiled the smileWhich was wont to move him once in a while.I said I was wearing his favorite flowers,But I wasted my words on the desert air,For he rode with a fixed and gloomy stare.I wonder what he was thinking about.As I don't read verse, I shan't find out.It was something subtle and deep, no doubt,A theme to detain a man for hours.Ah! there was the corner where Mr. S.So nearly induced me to whisper "yes;"And here it was that the next but oneProposed on horseback, or would have done,Had his horse not most opportunely shied;Which perhaps was due to the unseen flickHe received from my whip; 't was a scurvy trick,But I never could do with that young man, —I hope his present young woman can.Well, I must say, never, since time began,Did I go for a duller or longer ride.He never smiles and he never speaks;He might go on like this for weeks;He rolls a slightly frenzied eyeTowards the blue and burning sky,And the cob bounds on with tireless stride.If we aren't home for lunch at twoI don't know what papa will do;But I know full well he will say to me,"I never approved of Mr. B.;It's the very devil that you and heRide, ride together, forever ride."J. K. Stephen.

UP THE SPOUT

IHI! Just you drop that! Stop, I say!Shirk work, think slink off, twist friend's wrist?Where that spined sand's lined band's the bay —Lined blind with true sea's blue, as due —Promising – not to pay?IIFor the sea's debt leaves wet the sand;Burst worst fate's weight's in one burst gun?A man's own yacht, blown – What? off land?Tack back, or veer round here, then – queer!Reef points, though – understand?IIII'm blest if I do. Sigh? be blowed!Love's doves make break life's ropes, eh? Tropes!Faith's brig, baulked, sides caulked, rides at road;Hope's gropes befogged, storm-dogged and bogged —Clogged, water-logged, her load!IVStowed, by Jove, right and tight, away.No show now how best plough sea's brow,Wrinkling – breeze quick, tease thick, ere day,Clear sheer wave's sheen of green, I mean,With twinkling wrinkles – eh?VSea sprinkles wrinkles, tinkles lightShells' bells – boy's joys that hap to snap!It's just sea's fun, breeze done, to spiteGod's rods that scourge her surge, I'd urge —Not proper, is it – quite?VISee, fore and aft, life's craft undone!Crank plank, split spritsail – mark, sea's lark!That gray cold sea's old sprees, begunWhen men lay dark i' the ark, no spark,All water – just God's fun!VIINot bright, at best, his jest to theseSeemed – screamed, shrieked, wreaked on kin for sin!When for mirth's yell earth's knell seemed pleaseSome dumb new grim great whim in himMade Jews take chalk for cheese.VIIICould God's rods bruise God's Jews? Their jowlsBobbed, sobbed, gaped, aped, the plaice in face!None heard, 'tis odds, his – God's – folk's howls.Now, how must I apply, to tryThis hookiest-beaked of owls?IXWell, I suppose God knows – I don't.Time's crimes mark dark men's types, in stripesBroad as fen's lands men's hands were wontLeave grieve unploughed, though proud and loudWith birds' words – No! he won't!XOne never should think good impossible.Eh? say I'd hide this Jew's oil's cruse —His shop might hold bright gold, engrossibleBy spy – spring's air takes there no careTo wave the heath-flower's glossy bell!XIBut gold bells chime in time there, coined —Gold! Old Sphinx winks there – 'Read my screed!'Doctrine Jews learn, use, burn for, joined(Through new craft's stealth) with health and wealth —At once all three purloined!XIII rose with dawn, to pawn, no doubt,(Miss this chance, glance untried aside?)John's shirt, my – no! Ay, so – the lout!Let yet the door gape, store on floorAnd not a soul about?XIIISuch men lay traps, perhaps – and I'mWeak – meek – mild – child of woe, you know!But theft, I doubt, my lout calls crime.Shrink? Think! Love's dawn in pawn – you spawnOf Jewry! Just in time!Algernon Charles Swinburne.

AFTER WHITMAN

AN AMERICAN, ONE OF THE ROUGHS, A KOSMOS

NATURE, continuous Me!Saltness, and vigorous, never torpi-yeast of Me!Florid, unceasing, forever expansive;Not Schooled, not dizened, not washed and powdered;Strait-laced not at all; far otherwise than polite;Not modest, nor immodest;Divinely tanned and freckled; gloriously unkempt;Ultimate yet unceasing; capricious though determined;Speak as thou listeth, and tell the askers that which they seek to know.Thy speech to them will be not quite intelligible.Never mind! utter thy wild commonplaces;Yawp them loudly, shrilly;Silence with shrill noise the lisps of the foo-foos.Answer in precise terms of barbaric vaguenessThe question that the Fun editor hath sparked through Atlantic cableTo W..T W..TM.N, the speaker of the pass-word primeval;The signaller of the signal of democracy;The seer and hearer of things in general;The poet translucent; fleshy, disorderly, sensually inclined;Each tag and part of whom is a miracle.(Thirteen pages of MS. relating to Mr. W..t W..tm.n are here omitted.)Rhapsodically state the fact that is and is not;That is not, being past; that is, being eternal;If indeed it ever was, which is exactly the point in question.Anonymous.

CAMERADOS

EVERYWHERE, everywhere, following me;Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me with the elbows;Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder-kettle;Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges;Soothing me with the strain that I neither permit nor prohibit;Flocking this way and that, reverent, eager, orotund, irrepressible;Denser than sycamore leaves when the north-winds are scouring Paumanok;What can I do to restrain them? Nothing, verily nothing.Everywhere, everywhere, crying aloud for me;Crying, I hear; and I satisfy them out of my nature;And he that comes at the end of the feast shall find something over.Whatever they want I give; though it be something else, they shall have it.Drunkard, leper, Tammanyite, small-pox and cholera patient, shoddy and codfish millionnaire,And the beautiful young men, and the beautiful young women, all the same,Crowding, hundreds of thousands, cosmical multitudes,Buss me and hang on my hips and lean up to my shoulders,Everywhere listening to my yawp and glad whenever they hear it;Everywhere saying, say it, Walt, we believe it:Everywhere, everywhere.Bayard Taylor.

IMITATION OF WALT WHITMAN

WHO am I?I have been reading Walt Whitman, and know not whether he be me, or me he; —Or otherwise!Oh, blue skies! oh, rugged mountains! oh, mighty, rolling Niagara!Oh, chaos and everlasting bosh!I am a poet; I swear it! If you do not believe it you are a dolt, a fool, an idiot!Milton, Shakespere, Dante, Tommy Moore, Pope, never, but Byron, too, perhaps, and last, not least, Me, and the Poet Close.We send our resonance echoing down the adamantine cañons of the future!We live forever! The worms who criticise us (asses!) laugh, scoff, jeer, and babble babble – die!Serve them right.What is the difference between Judy, the pride of Fleet Street, the glory of Shoe Lane, and Walt Whitman?Start not! 'Tis no end of a minstrel show who perpends this query;'Tis no brain-racking puzzle from an inner page of the Family Herald,No charade, acrostic (double or single), conundrum, riddle, rebus, anagram, or other guess-work.I answer thus: We both write truths – great, stern, solemn, unquenchable truths – couched in more or less ridiculous language.I, as a rule use rhyme, he does not; therefore, I am his Superior (which is also a lake in his great and glorious country).I scorn, with the unutterable scorn of the despiser of pettiness, to take a mean advantage of him.He writes, he sells, he is read (more or less); why then should I rack my brains and my rhyming dictionary? I will see the public hanged first!I sing of America, of the United States, of the stars and stripes of Oshkosh, of Kalamazoo, and of Salt Lake City.I sing of the railroad cars, of the hotels, of the breakfasts, the lunches, the dinners, and the suppers;Of the soup, the fish, the entrées, the joints, the game, the puddings and the ice-cream.I sing all – I eat all – I sing in turn of Dr. Bluffem's Antibilious Pills.No subject is too small, too insignificant, for Nature's poet.I sing of the cocktail, a new song for every cocktail, hundreds of songs, hundreds of cocktails.It is a great and a glorious land! The Mississippi, the Missouri, and a million other torrents roll their waters to the ocean.It is a great and glorious land! The Alleghanies, the Catskills, the Rockies (see atlas for other mountain ranges too numerous to mention) pierce the clouds!And the greatest and most glorious product of this great and glorious land is Walt Whitman;This must be so, for he says it himself.There is but one greater than he between the rising and the setting sun.There is but one before whom he meekly bows his humbled head.Erase your national advertisements of liver pads and cures for rheumatism from your public monuments, and inscribe thereon in letters of gold the name Judy.Judy.

IMITATION OF WALT WHITMAN

THE clear cool note of the cuckoo which has ousted the legitimate nest-holder,The whistle of the railway guard despatching the train to the inevitable collision,The maiden's monosyllabic reply to a polysyllabic proposal,The fundamental note of the last trump, which is presumably D natural;All of these are sounds to rejoice in, yea to let your ribs re-echo with.But better than all of them is the absolutely last chord of the apparently inexhaustible pianoforte player.J. K. Stephen.

THE POET AND THE WOODLOUSE

SAID a poet to a woodlouse, "Thou art certainly my brother;I discern in thee the markings of the fingers of the Whole;And I recognize, in spite of all the terrene smut and smother,In the colors shaded off thee, the suggestions of a soul."Yea," the poet said, "I smell thee by some passive divination,I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house;What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion,Had the æons thought of making thee a man and me a louse."The broad lives of upper planets, their absorption and digestion,Food and famine, health and sickness, I can scrutinize and test,Through a shiver of the senses comes a resonance of question,And by proof of balanced answer I decide that I am best."Man the fleshly marvel always feels a certain kind of awe stickTo the skirts of contemplation, cramped with nympholeptic weight;Feels his faint sense charred and branded by the touch of solar caustic,On the forehead of his spirit feels the footprint of a Fate.""Notwithstanding which, O poet," spake the woodlouse, very blandly,"I am likewise the created, – I the equipoise of thee;I the particle, the atom, I behold on either hand lieThe inane of measured ages that were embryos of me."I am fed with intimations, I am clothed with consequences,And the air I breathe is colored with apocalyptic blush;Ripest-budded odors blossom out of dim chaotic stenches,And the Soul plants spirit-lilies in sick leagues of human slush."I am thrilled half cosmically through by cryptophantic surgings,Till the rhythmic hills roar silent through a spongious kind of blee;And earth's soul yawns disembowelled of her pancreatic organs,Like a madrepore if mesmerized, in rapt catalepsy."And I sacrifice, a Levite; and I palpitate, a poet;Can I close dead ears against the rush and resonance of things?Symbols in me breathe and flicker up the heights of her heroic;Earth's worst spawn, you said, and cursed me? Look! approve me! I have wings."Ah, men's poets! men's conventions crust you round and swathe you mist-like,And the world's wheels grind your spirits down the dust ye overtrod;We stand sinlessly stark-naked in effulgence of the Christlight,And our polecat chokes not cherubs; and our skunk smells sweet to God."For he grasps the pale Created by some thousand vital handles,Till a Godshine, bluely winnowed through the sieve of thunder-storms,Shimmers up the non-existence round the churning feet of angels;And the atoms of that glory may be seraphs, being worms."Friends, your nature underlies us and your pulses overplay us;Ye, with social sores unbandaged, can ye sing right and steer wrong?For the transient cosmic, rooted in imperishable chaos,Must be kneaded into drastics as material for a song."Eyes once purged from homebred vapors through humanitarian passionSee that monochrome a despot through a democratic prism;Hands that rip the soul up, reeking from divine evisceration,Not with priestlike oil anoint him, but a stronger-smelling chrism."Pass, O poet, retransfigured! God, the psychometric rhapsode,Fills with fiery rhythms the silence, stings the dark with stars that blink;All eternities hang round him like an old man's clothes collapsèd,While he makes his mundane music – and He will not stop, I think."Algernon Charles Swinburne.

AFTER CHARLES KINGSLEY

THREE LITTLE FISHERS

THREE little fishers trudged over the hill,Over the hill in the sun's broad glare,With rods and crooked pins, to the brookby the mill,While three fond mothers sought them everywhere.For boys will go fishing, though mothers deny.Watching their chance they sneak off on the slyTo come safely back in the gloaming.Three mothers waited outside the gate.Three little fishers, tired, sunburnt, and worn,Came into sight as the evening grew late,Their chubby feet bleeding, their clothing all torn,For "boys will be boys" – have a keen eye for fun,While mothers fret, fume, scold, and – succumb,And welcome them home in the gloaming.Three little fishers were called to explain —Each stood condemned, with his thumb in his eye,They promised never to do so again,And were hung up in the pantry to dry.Three mothers heaved great sighs of relief,An end had been put to their magnified grief,When the boys came home in the gloaming.Frank H. Stauffer.

THE THREE POETS

THREE poets went sailing down Boston Bay,All into the East as the sun went down.Each felt that the editors loved him best,And would welcome spring poetry in Boston town.For poets must dream, though the editors frown;Their revel in visions will not be turned down,Though the general reader is moaning!Three editors climbed to the loftiest towerThat they could find in all Boston town.And they planned to conceal themselves, hour after hour,Till the Sun – and the poets – had both gone down.For spring poets must write, though the editors rage.The artistic nature must thus be engaged,Though the publishers all are groaning!Three corpses lay out on the Back Bay sandJust after the first Spring Sun went down,And the Press sat down to a banquet grandIn honor of poets no more in the town.For poets will write while the editors sleep,Though they've little to earn and nothing to keep,And the populace all are moaning!Lilian Whiting.

AFTER MRS. R. H. STODDARD

THE NETTLE

IF days were nights, I could their weight endure,This darkness cannot hide from me the plantI seek; I know it by the rasping touch.The moon is wrapped in bombazine of cloud;The capes project like crooked lobster-shearsInto the bobbery of the waves; the marsh,At ebb, has now a miserable smell.I will not be delayed nor hustled back,Though every wind should muss my outspread hair.I snatch the plant that seems my coming fate;I pass the crinkled satin of the rose,The violets, frightened out of all their wits,And other flowers, to me so commonplace,And cursed with showy mediocrity,To cull the foliage which repels and stings.Weak hands may bleed; but mine are tough with pride,And I but smile where others sob and screech.The draggled flounces of the willow lashMy neck; I tread upon the bouncing rake,Which bangs me sorely, but I hasten on,With teeth firm-set as biting on a wire,And feet and fingers clinched in bitter pain.This, few would comprehend; but, if they did,I should despise myself and merit scorn.We all are riddles which we cannot guess;Each has his gimcracks and his thingumbobs,And mine are night and nettles, mud and mist,Since others hate them, cowardly avoid.Things are mysterious when you make them so,And the slow-pacing days are mighty queer;But Fate is at the bottom of it all,And something somehow turns up in the end.Bayard Taylor.

AFTER BAYARD TAYLOR

HADRAMAUT

THE grand conglomerate hills of Araby,That stand empanoplied in utmost thought,With dazzling ramparts front the Indian sea,Down there in Hadramaut.The sunshine smashes in the doors of mornAnd leaves them open; there the vibrant calmOf life magniloquent pervades forlornThe giant fronds of palm.The cockatoo upon the upas screams;The armadillo fluctuates o'er the hill;And like a flag, incarnadined in dreams,All crimsonly I thrill!There have iconoclasts no power to harm,So, folded grandly in translucent mist,I let the lights stream down my jasper arm,And o'er my opal fist.An Adamite of old, primeval Earth,I see the Sphinx upon the porphyry shore,Deprived of utterance ages ere her birth,As I am, – only more!Who shall ensnare me with invested gold,Or prayer symbols, backed like malachite?Let gaunt reformers objurgate and scold,I gorge me with delight.I do not yearn for what I covet most;I give the winds the passionate gifts I sought;And slumber fiercely on the torrid coast,Down there in Hadramaut!Bayard Taylor.

AFTER WILLIAM MORRIS

ESTUNT THE GRIFF

(Argument: Showing how a man of England, hearing from certain Easterlings of the glories of their land, set sail to rule it)

AND so unto the End of Graves came he,Where nigh the staging, ready for the sea,Oarless and sailless lay the galley's bulk,Albeit smoke did issue from the hulkAnd fell away, across the marshes dun,Into the visage of the wan-white sun.And seaward ran the river, cold and gray,Bearing the brown-sailed Eastland boats away'Twixt the low shore and shallow sandy spit.Yet he, being sad, took little heed of it,But straightly fled toward the misty beach,And hailed in choked and swiftly spoken speechA shallop, that for men's conveyance layHard by the margin of that watery way.Then many that were in like evil plight —Sad folk, with drawn, dumb lips and faces white,That writhed themselves into a hopeless smile —Crowded the shallop, making feint the whileOf merriment and pleasure at that tide,Though oft upon the laughers' lips there diedThe jest, and in its place there came a sigh,So that men gat but little good thereby,And, shivering, clad themselves about with furs.Strange faces of the swarthy outlandersLooked down upon the shallop as she threwThe sullen waters backward from her screwAnd, running forward for some little space,Stayed featly at the galley's mounting-place,Where slowly these sad-faced landsmen wentCrabwise and evil-mouthed with discontent,Holding to sodden rope and rusty chainAnd bulwark that was wetted with the rain:For 'neath their feet the black bows rose and fell,Nor might a man walk steadfastly or wellWho had not hand upon a rail or rope;And Estunt turned him landward, and wan hopeGrew on his spirit as an evil mist,Thinking of loving lips his lips had kissedAn hour since, and how those lips were sweetAn hour since, far off in Fenchurch Street.Then, with a deep-drawn breath most like a sigh,He watched the empty shallop shoreward hie;Then turned him round the driving rain to face,And saw men heave the anchor from its place;Whereat, when by the river-mouth, the shipBegan, amid the waters' strife to dip,His soul was heaved between his jaws that day,And to the East the good ship took her way.Rudyard Kipling.

AFTER ALFRED AUSTIN

AN ODE

I SING a song of sixpence, and of ryeA pocketful – recalling, sad to state,The niggardly emoluments which IReceive as Laureate!Also I sing of blackbirds – in the martAt four-a-penny. Thus, in other words,The sixpence which I mentioned at the startPurchased two dozen birds.So four-and-twenty birds were deftly hid —Or shall we say, were skilfully concealed? —Within the pie-dish. When they raised the lid,What melody forth pealed!Now I like four-and-twenty blackbirds sing,With all their sweetness, all their rapture keen;And isn't this a pretty little thingTo set before the Queen?The money-counting monarch – sordid man! —His wife, who robbed the little busy bees,I disregard. In fact a poet canBut pity folks like these.The maid was in the garden. Happy maid!Her choice entitles her to rank aboveMaster and Mistress. Gladly she surveyedThe Garden That I Love!– Where grow my daffodils, anemones,Tulips, auriculas, chrysanthemums,Cabbages, asparagus, sweet peas,With apples, pears, and plums —(That's a parenthesis. The very nameOf garden really carries one astray!)But suddenly a feathered ruffian came,And stole her nose away.Eight stanzas finished! So my Court costumeI lay aside: the Laureate, I suppose,Has done his part; the man may now resumeHis journalistic prose.Anthony C. Deane.