Page 79 - Poetry-Books

Their visionary teeth of wondrous size
(By visionary teeth of course I mean
The molars optical that come between
The wisdom teeth that lie back out of sight
And those with which we generally bite).
They’d looked about them, and they had discerned
How men and women oftentimes have yearned
In utter hopelessness to gather in
The laurels that the poets strive to win.
They’d seen, as you and I might see if we
Would look about us with desire to see,
That in each mortal breast ambition lies,
As far beyond their reach ofttimes as skies
Beyond the reach of earthworms are. On this
They’d based their enterprise,
And Fame’s abyss,
Too deep for some, they guaranteed to sound;
Take mediocrity—make it renowned.
They sought subscribers. Dollars ten per year
Would make appear,
In dailies and in comic weeklies, verse
By the subscriber signed; and if his purse
Was opened for a hundred, ‘t would result
In poems that would guarantee a “cult”
Like that of Browning; so that plain John Binks
Would find himself the source of lofty “thinks”;
And he whose soul
Was fitted best for selling wood and coal,
Would find his name upon the honor roll
Of poets for a year,
On an expenditure by no means dear:
Although these youths in wisdom great declined
To guarantee his greatness to the mind
Of dear old Boston; for they’d oft observed
How her strong-minded intellects are swerved
Too easily from good things to the bad,
If in the latter they can find a fad.
Two hundred dollars would insure a book,
And, further, these young fellows undertook
To see that critics praised the said John Binks
In terms that would elicit from the Sphinx
A word or two of envy, and would send

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