Page 53 - Poetry-Whimsy

To Critics

When I was seventeen I heard
From each censorious tongue,
“I’d not do that if I were you,
You see you’re rather young.”

Now that I number forty years,
I’m quite as often told
Of this or that I shouldn’t do
Because I’m quite too old.

O carping world! If there’s an age
Where youth and manhood keep
An equal poise, alas! I must
Have passed it in my sleep.

— Walter Learned (Century Magazine, 1887)

A Pin

Oh, I know a certain woman who is reckoned with the good,
But she fills me with more terror than a raging lion would.
The little chills run up and down my spine whene’er we meet,
Though she seems a gentle creature and she’s very trim and neat.

And she has a thousand virtues and not one acknowledged sin,
But she is the sort of person you could liken to a pin.
And she pricks you, and she sticks you, in a way that can’t be said—
When you seek for what has hurt you, why, you cannot find the head.

But she fills you with discomfort and exasperating pain—
If anybody asks you why, you really can’t explain.
A pin is such a tiny thing,—of that there is no doubt,—
Yet when it’s sticking in your flesh, you’re wretched till it’ s out!

She is wonderfully observing—when she meets a pretty girl
She is always sure to tell her if her “bang” is out of curl.
And she is so sympathetic: to her friend, who’s much admired,
She is often heard remarking, “Dear, you look so worn and tired!”

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