Page 80 - Poetry-Books

Lord Tennyson—the Queen’s inspired friend—
Into a mad, hysterical dismay
For fear to Binks he must resign the bay.
Nor was this all these men would undertake.
The costliest of all their works, they’d make,
For just one thousand dollars in hard cash,
The writer of the veriest kind of trash
A man immortal—one beside of whom
E’en Shakspere’d tremble in his dusty tomb;
Who’d send John Milton’s spook into a rage
Such as he’d never known for all his age;
Who’d waken Byron from his last long sleep,
And send him to the Hellespont to weep;
Would e’en make Horace, Roman good and true,
For his immortal name feel rather blue.
Why, friends, they guaranteed that blessed day
To take e’en me in hand, if I would pay,
And write my verses for me, so that I
Could never fail of immortality.
It made no difference to them what style
Of verse it was man thought it worth his while
To have his name put to; they’d guarantee
To make the poet as he wished to be.
They had, you see,
A wholesome scorn
For those who say the poet must be born,
And were not afraid
To show the world that poets can be made.
They’d make him what he’d pay for: if his hope
To turn an epic was, or simple trope,
Or, as the case might be, to boom some soap,
They’d do it for him, and to show how square
They meant to be, how honest and how fair,
They pointed to a notice overhead,
Whereon in great astonishment I read:

NO BAY.
NO PAY.

I asked for testimonials, great names
They’d made for men, and possibly for dames;
The which they gave me, and you’d start to see

~ 78 ~