Bert Leston Taylor

“ Hedged round with thorns of maiden doubts and fears,—
Within, without, a silence grave, intense,—
Her soul lies sleeping through the rose-leaf years.
Hedged round with thorns of maiden doubts and fears;
And all save one the thither path shall miss.
Her soul lies sleeping through the rose-leaf years,
Waiting the Prince and his awakening kiss.
And all save one the thither path shall miss;
For one alone may thread the thorn defence. ”

“ One ought to do his duty, and I never am remiss.
A simple word of thanks is all I ask. Here, swallow this!”
Then, reaching in the tonneau, he’d unpack his little kit,
And perform an operation that was workmanlike and fit.
“You may survive,” said Doctor Brown; “it’s happened once or twice.
If not, you’ve had the benefit of competent advice.”
Oh, if all our motormaniacs were equally humane,
How little bitterness there’d be, or reason to complain!
How different our point of view if we were ridden down
By lunatics as thoughtful as gentle Doctor Brown! ”

“ Palleth upon my soul the jest,
Falleth upon my pen a blight.
The daily task has lost its zest,
And everything is flat and trite.
There’s nothing humorous in sight;
Don’t mind if I am dull to-day.
For every column is a fight
When woods are but a week away. ”

“ The weekly music of the London Sphere—
That deathless tomes the living present brings:
Great literature is with us year on year.
Books of the mighty dead, whom men revere,
Remind me I can make my books sublime. ”

“ The heart and soul of him may twist
Who doth in cap and bells pursue
The glad sad trade of humorist!
[Pg 78]
GENTLE DOCTOR BROWN
It was a gentle sawbones and his name was Doctor Brown.
His auto was the terror of a small suburban town.
His practice, quite amazing for so trivial a place,
Consisted of the victims of his homicidal pace.
So constant was his practice and so high his motor’s gear
That at knocking down pedestrians he never had a peer;
But it must, in simple justice, be as truly written down
That no man could be more thoughtful than gentle Doctor Brown. ”

“ While a turn of the Key unlocked the wealth
That all unknown in the Scriptures lay.
Disease is sin, the Book defined;
Sickness is error to which men cling;
Pain is merely a state of mind,
And matter a non-existent thing. ”

“ It hung like a pall on the wall of the washroom,
And gathered the grime of the linotype crew.
The sink and the soap and the lye that stood by it
Remain; but the towel is gone past recall.
O tempora! Also, O mores! Sic transit
The time-honored towel that creaked on the wall.
The grimy old towel, the slimy old towel,
The tacky old towel that hung on the wall.
Now hangs in the washroom a huge roll of paper—
The old printer’s towel we’ll never see more.
The new (see directions) is “used like a blotter,”
And crumpled and scattered in wads on the floor. ”

“ Hide and seek with Lalage.
People hand me out advice:
“Hod, you’re doing too much drivel.
Write us something sweet and nice.
Stow the satire, chop the frivol.”
But we have the rent to pay,
Lalage; eh, Lalage?
[Pg 61] Ladies shy the saving sense
Write me patronizing letters;
And there are the writing gents,
Always out to knock their betters.
What cares Flaccus if he may
Lallygag with Lalage!
No, old top, the writing lay’s
Not a bed of sweet geranium.
Brickbats mingle with bouquets
Shied at my devoted cranium.
Does it peeve yours truly? Nay.
Nothing can—with Lalage. ”

“ Whacketty-whack on breast and back,
Whacketty-whack from morn to noon;
Whacketty-whacketty-whacketty-whack!—
Till the abbey rang with the dismal tune.
Deacon and prior, lay-brother and friar
Exclaimed at these whoppings spectacular;
And even the Abbot remarked that the habit
Of scourging oneself might be carried too far.
[Pg 13] “My son,” said he, “I am pleased to see
Such penance as never was known before;
But you raise such a racket in dusting your jacket,
The noise is becoming a bit of a bore. ”

“ But something was wrong with the curst gasoline.
“By Hasselt!” Dirck groaned, “We’ll be half a day late;
We ought to have sent the good tidings by freight.”
False prophet! I tinkered a minute or two
And again we were off like “a bolt from the blue.” [Pg 74]
We ate up the hills at a forty-mile clip,
And skidded the turns like the snap of a whip,
Till we dashed into Aix and were pinched by a cop
For failing to slow when commanded to stop. ”

“ I snapped on my goggles and got to my work.
“Hi, there!” yelled the cop in the helmet of white;
“Let her flicker!” said Joris, and into the night,
With a sneer at the speed laws, we hurtled hell-bent
To carry to Aix the good tidings from Ghent. ”

“ And Smith and Brown in this and that,
So—nothing came to pass.
[Pg 40] The profligates of Our Town
Pitch pennies as of yore;
Police corruption flourishes
As rankly as before,
Still are our gilded ginmills
Foul palaces of shame.
Reform is just as distant
As when the wise men came.
[Pg 41]
WHEN THE SIRUP’S ON THE FLAPJACK
When the sirup’s on the flapjack and the coffee’s in the pot;
When the fly is in the butter—where he’d rather be than not;
When the cloth is on the table, and the plates are on the cloth;
When the salt is in the shaker and the chicken’s in the broth ”

“ Shine on! [It shines on.]
[Pg 51]
WHEN IT IS HOT
“And Nebuchadnezzar commanded the most mighty men that were in his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace.” ”

“ If it be not so to me,
What care I how it be?
[Pg 95]
THE LAND OF RAINBOW’S-END
Young Faintheart lay on a wayside bank,
Full prey to doubts and fears,
When he did espy come trudging by
A Pilgrim bent with years. ”

“ NOTE
For the privilege of reprinting the rimes gathered here I am indebted to the courtesy of the Chicago Tribune and Puck, in whose pages most of them first appeared. “The Lay of St. Ambrose” is new. ”