Page 15 - Poetry-Books

The Future of the Classics

Written after reading telegraphic reports of the Phi Beta Kappa
address of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and retained, with
apologies, after receiving fuller reports (and the orator’s
subsequent explanations), for the sake of the labor bestowed on
the Versification by the author, who is pleased to be assured that
his poetical Prophecy is Fallacious.

No longer, O scholars, shall Plautus
Be taught us.
No more shall professors be partial
To Martial.
No ninny
Will stop playing “shinney”
For Pliny.
No true son of Erin will leave his potato
To list to the love-lore of Ovid or Plato.
Old Homer,
That hapless old roamer,
Will ne’er find a rest ‘neath collegiate dome or
Anywhere else. As to Seneca,
Any cur
Safely may snub him, or urge ill
Effects from the reading of Virgil.
Cornelius Nepos
Won’t keep us
Much longer from pleasure’s light errands—
Nor Terence.
The irreverent now may all scoff in ease
At the shade of poor old Aristophanes.
And moderns it now doth behoove in all
Ways to despise poor old Juvenal;
And to chivvy
Livy.
The class-room hereafter will miss a row
Of eager young students of Cicero.
The longshoreman—yes, and the dock-rat, he’s
Down upon Socrates.
And what’ll
Induce us to read Aristotle?

~ 13 ~