Page 71 - Poetry-Books

Never Despair

Unto a great big magazine I took one sunny day
A light and airy symphony, and I was greatly shocked
To hear the editor in honeyed accents softly say,
“It is lovely, it is beautiful, but we are overstocked.”

Then to another editor I took my symphony:
He read it with a smile that showed his joy and happiness.
“It is just the thing for August, and I like it, but you see
Our August number’s all made up and ready for the press.”

“I’ll try again,” I shouted in my dire extremity,
As I took it to an editor who read it, all elate,
While he murmured, “It’s delightful, oh, delightful, but, dear me,
We printed something similar in eighteen sixty-eight.”

I smiled a very wicked smile, and like the hand of fate
Came down upon that editor who called my ode divine.
“How could you, sir, have printed aught like this in sixty-eight,
When your magazine first saw the light in eighteen sixty-nine?”

The editor looked foolish, for he knew that he was caught,
And he chuckled, oh, he chuckled like the greatest fiend alive;
But like a worthy man he sent me from him rapture fraught,
With my fingers wound about a purple checklet for a five.

— R.K. Munkittrick (Century Magazine, 1892)

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