Impertinent Poems

FAILURE

 
What is a failure? It's only a spur
To a man who receives it right,
And it makes the spirit within him stir
To go in once more and fight.
If you never have failed, it's an even guess
You never have won a high success.
 
 
What is a miss? It's a practice shot
Which a man must make to enter
The list of those who can hit the spot
Of the bull's-eye in the centre.
If you never have sent your bullet wide,
You never have put a mark inside.
 
 
What is a knock-down? A count of ten
Which a man may take for a rest.
It will give him a chance to come up again
And do his particular best.
If you never have more than met your match,
I guess you never have toed the scratch.
 

GOOD

 
You look at yourself in the glass and say:
"Really, I'm rather distingué.
To be sure my eyes
Are assorted in size,
And my mouth is a crack
Running too far back,
And I hardly suppose
An unclassified nose
Is a mark of beauty, as beauty goes;
But still there's something about the whole
Suggesting a beauty of – well, say soul."
And this is the reason that photograph-galleries
Are able to pay employees' salaries.
Now, this little mark of our brotherhood,
By which each thinks that his looks are good,
Is laudable quite in you and me,
Provided we not only look, but be.
 
 
I look at my poem and you hear me say:
"Really, it's clever in its way.
The theme is old
And the style is cold.
These words run rude;
That line is crude;
And here is a rhyme
Which fails to chime,
And the metre dances out of time.
Oh, it isn't so bright it'll blind the sun,
But it's better than that by Such-a-one."
And this is the reason I and my creditors
Curse the "unreasoning whims" of editors,
And yet, if one writes for a livelihood,
He ought to believe that his work is good,
Provided the form that his vanity takes
Not only believes, but also makes.
 
 
And there is our neighbor. We've heard him say:
"Really, I'm not the commonest clay.
Brown got his dust
By betraying a trust;
And Jones's wife
Leads a terrible life;
While I have heard
That Robinson's word
Isn't quite so good as Gas preferred.
And Smith has a soul with seamy cracks,
For he talks of people behind their backs!"
And these are the reasons the penitentiary
Holds open house for another century.
True, we want no man in our neighborhood
Who doesn't consider his character good,
But then it ought to be also true
He not only knows to consider, but do.
 

LET'S BE GLAD WE'RE LIVING

I

 
Oh, let's be glad that we're living yet; you bet!
The sun runs round and the rain is wet
And the bird flip-flops its wing;
Tennis and toil bring an equal sweat;
It's so much trouble to frown and fret,
So easy to laugh and sing,
Ting ling!
So easy to laugh and sing!
(And yet, sometimes, when I sing my song,
I'm almost afraid my method is wrong.)
 

II

 
Many have money which I have not, God wot!
But victual and keep are all they've got,
And the stars still dot the sky.
Heaven be praised that they shine so bright,
Heaven be praised for an appetite,
So who is richer than I?
Hi yi!
Say, who is richer than I?
(And yet I'm hoping to sell this screed
For several dollars I hardly need.)
 

III

 
Ducats and dividends, stocks and shares, who cares?
Worry and property travel in pairs,
While the green grows on the tree.
A banquet's nothing more than a meal;
A trolley's much like an automobile,
With a transfer sometimes free,
Tra lee!
With a transfer sometimes free!
(And yet you're unwilling, I plainly see,
To leave the automobile to me.)
 

IV

 
A note you give and a note you get; don't fret,
For they both may go to protest yet,
And the roses blow perfume.
Fortune is only a Dun report;
The Homestead Law and the Bankrupt Court
Have fostered many a boom,
Boom, boom!
Have fostered many a boom.
(But I see you smile in a rapturous way
On the man who is rated double A.)
 

V

 
Life is a show for you and me; it's free!
And what you look for is what you see;
A hill is a humped-up hollow.
Riches are yours with a dollar bill;
A million's the same little digit still,
With nothing but naughts to follow,
So hollo!
There's nothing but naughts to follow.
(But you and I, as I've said before,
Could get along with a trifle more.)
 

SUCCESS

 
It's little the difference where you arrive;
The serious question is how you strive.
Are you up to your eyes in a wild romance?
Does your lady lead you a dallying dance?
Do you question if love be fate, or chance?
Oh, the world will ask: "Did he get the girl?"
Though gentleman, coxcomb, clown or churl,
Master or menial of passion's whirl.
But it isn't that. The world will run
Though you never bequeath it daughter or son,
But what, O lover, will come to you
If you be not chivalrous, honest, true?
As far ahead as a man may think,
You can see your little soul shrivel and shrink.
It's not, "Do you win?"
It is, "What have you been?"
 
 
Are you stripped for the world-old, world-wide race
For the metal which shines like the sun's own face
Till it dazzles us blind to the mean and base?
Do you say to yourself, "When I have my hoard,
I will give of the plenty which I have stored,
If the Lord bless me, I will bless the Lord"?
And do you forget, as you pile your pelf,
What is the gift you are giving yourself?
Though your mountain of gold may dazzle the day,
Can you climb its height with your feet of clay?
Oh, it isn't the stamp on the metal you win;
It's the stamp on the metal you coin within.
It's not what you give;
It is "What do you live?"
 
 
Are you going to sail the polar seas
To the point of ninety-and-north degrees,
Where the very words in your larynx freeze?
Well, the mob may ask "Did he reach the pole?
Though fair, or foul, did he touch the goal?"
But if that be the spirit which stirs your soul,
Off, off from the land below the zeroes;
For you are not of the stuff of heroes.
Ho! many a man can lead men forth
To the fearsome end of the Farthest North,
But can you be faithful for woe or weal
In a land where nothing but self is leal?
Oh, it isn't "How far?"
It is what you are.
And it isn't your lookout where you arrive,
But it's up to you as to how you strive.
 

THE GRILL

 
Why do you?
What's it to you?
I know you do, for I've seen the gruesome feeling simmer through you.
I've seen it rise behind your eyes
And take your features by surprise.
I've seen it in your half-hid grin
And the tilting-upness of your chin.
Good-natured though you are and fair, as you have often boasted,
Still you like to hear the other man artistically roasted.
 
 
Whenever the star secures the stage with the spotlight in the centre,
Why should the anvil chorus think it has the cue to enter?
Whenever the prima donna trills the E above the clef,
Why should the brasses orchestrate the bass in double f?
 
 
It's funny,
But it's even money,
You like to spy the buzzing fly in the other fellow's honey.
Though you have said that honest bread
Demands no honey on it spread,
And if we eat the crusty wheat
With appetite, it needs no sweet,
Still I have noticed you were not at all inclined to cry
Because the man the bees had blest was bothered with the fly.
 
 
Whenever the chef concocts a dish which sets the world to tasting,
Why does the cooking-school get out its recipes for basting?
Whenever a sprinter beats the bunch from the pistol-shot, why is it
The heavy hammer throwers get together for a visit?
Excuse me!
Did you accuse me
Of turning the spit a little bit myself? Why, you amuse me!
Didn't I scratch the sulphurous match
And blow the flame to make it catch?
Didn't you trot to get the pot
To heat the water good and hot?
Then, seizing on our victim, if we found no greater sin,
Didn't we call him "a lobster," and cheerfully chuck him in?
 

THE VISION

 
At the door of Success, I've been tempted to knock
Both the door and the man who went through it,
But I find that the fellow was greasing the lock
All the time that he strove to undo it,
So I either stay out, or must look for the key
Which slipped back the bolt which impeded,
And I'm certain to find it, as soon as I see
The reason my rival succeeded.
 
 
Yes, I own when the man is a rank also-ran
That I feel quite pish-tushy and pooh-y,
And exclaim if he ever knew saw-dust from bran,
Well – I come from just west of St. Louis!
But then, in the winning he's made, there's a hope
That I may do even as he did,
So I swallow my sneer and I study his dope
To discover just why he succeeded.
 
 
I've been up in the air, I've been down in the hole,
(But always, let's hope, on the level,)
And I've been on my uppers – so meagre my sole
'Twould scarcely have tempted the devil!
But it's nothing to you what I am, or I was,
And no whit of your sympathy's needed,
For I'm certain to win in the long run, because
I shall see how my rival succeeded.
 

BLOOD IS RED

 
Some of us don't drink, some of us do;
Some of us use a word or two.
Most of us, maybe, are half-way ripe
For deeds that would't look well in type.
All of us have done things, no doubt,
We don't very often brag about.
We are timidly good, we are badly bold,
But there's hope for the worst of us, I hold,
If there be a few things we didn't do,
For the reason that we so wanted to.
 
 
Some of us sin on a smaller scale.
(We don't mind minnows, we shy at a whale.)
We speak of a woman with half a sneer,
We sit on our hands when we ought to cheer.
The salad we mix in the bowl of the heart
We sometimes make a little too tart
For home consumption. We growl, we nag,
But we're not quite lost if we sometimes drag
The hot words back and make them mild
At the moment they fret to be running wild.
 
 
Don't pin your faith on the man or woman
Who never is tempted. We're mostly human.
And whoever he be who never has felt
The red blood sing in the veins and melt
The ice of convention, caste and creed,
To the very last barrier, has no need
To raise his brows at the rest of us.
It bides its time in the best of us,
And well for him if he do not do
That which the strength of him wants him to.