Harry Graham

“ Authors Foreword (To the Publisher)
HEN honest men are all in bed,
We poets at our desks are toiling,
To earn a modicum of bread,
And keep the pot a-boiling;
We weld together, bit by bit,
The fabric of our laboured wit.
[10]
We see with eyes of frank dismay
The coming of this Autumn season,
When bards are driven to display
Their feast of rhyme and reason;
With hectic brain and loosened collar,
We chase the too-elusive dollar. ”

“ Whence scholars, statesmen, bards have sprung,
Where ev'ry little barefoot child
Correctly lisps his mother-tongue,
And lingual solecisms betoken
That Scotch is drunk, as well as spoken, [79]
There dwells a man of iron nerve,
A millionaire without a peer,
Possessing that supreme reserve
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere,
And marks him out to human ken
As one of Nature's noblemen.
Like other self-made persons, he
Is surely much to be excused,
Since they have had no choice, you see,
Of the material to be used ”

“ At Scottish Conversaziones,
Where, flushed with wine and Auld Lang Syne,
You worship at your country's shrine!
[33] William Waldorf Astor
OW blest a thing it is to die
For Country's sake, as bards have sung! ”