Page 57 - Poetry-Books

With Pen and Ink

With pen and ink one might indite
A sonnet, or indeed might write
A billet-doux, or, eke to raise
The wind, a note for thirty days.

Not mine the poem; they’d send it back
Or shove it into BRIC-A-BRAC.*
My flippant muse is never seen
Within the solid magazine.

And not for me the billet-doux;
Indeed, who should I write it to?
I would not thus employ my pen,
Unless to woo my wife again.

Ah me! the while I stop to think—
What Shakspere did with pen and ink,
I wonder how his ink was made, —
If blue or purple was the shade;

His pen,—broad-nibbed and rather stiff,
Like this, or fine? I wonder if
He tried a “Gillott,” thirty-nine,
Or used a coarser pen, like mine?

Or was it brains? No ink I know
Will really make ideas flow,
Nor can the most ingenious pen
Make wits and poets of dull men.

So this the miracle explains,
He used his pen and ink with brains.
Mine is the harder task, I think,
To write with only pen and ink.

— Walter Learned (Century Magazine, 1888)

* “Bric-a-Brac” was the humor and poetry section of The Century.

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