Page 38 - Poetry-Romance

The one, he talked of common love
In tones that made her shudder;
The other soared with her above
To misty realms of Buddha.
She sent the first upon his way
With snub unmitigated
Upon the other smiled, and they
By Hymen were translated.

FOUR YEARS LATER.

Within a lofty Harlem flat
She’s found her sweet Nirvana;
She does not think of this and that
As marshy zephyrs fan her;
She dreamily wipes Buddha’s nose
And spanketh Zoroaster,
And mends their transcendental clothes,
Torn by occult disaster.

Her adept husband still can solve
The mysteries eternal,
But for some reason can’t evolve
A salary diurnal.
He still floats on to cycles new,
But fills his astral body
With—not the Cheelah’s milky brew,
But Jersey apple toddy.

She eloquently mourns her life
And objurgates her Latin,
To daily see the drummer’s wife
Drive by her, clad in satin.
She has been heard, in fact, to say
When somewhat discontented,
“Though ‘osophies ‘ hold social sway,
Though ‘ologies’ enjoy their day,
I think, in love, the good old way
By far the best invented.”

— Henry J. W. Dam (Century Magazine, 1884)

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