The Project Gutenberg eBook of Something Else Again

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Title: Something Else Again

Author: Franklin P. Adams

Release date: October 7, 2008 [eBook #26797]
Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN ***

SOMETHING
ELSE AGAIN

By

FRANKLIN P. ADAMS

Author of
"By and Large," "In Other Words,"
"Tobogganing on Parnassus,"
"Weights and Measures,"
Etc.

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK LONDON

1920

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

To MONTAGUE GLASS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author wishes to thank the New York Tribune, Life, Harper's Magazine, Collier's Weekly, and The Home Sector, for their kind permission to include in this volume material which has appeared in their pages.

	page
Present Imperative	3
The Doughboy's Horace	5
From: Horace To: Phyllis	7
Advising Chloë	8
To an Aged Cut-up I	9
II	10
His Monument	11
Glycera Rediviva!	12
On a Wine of Horace's	13
"What Flavour?"	14
The Stalling of Q. H. F.	15
On the Flight of Time	16
The Last Laugh	17
Again Endorsing the Lady I	19
II	20
Propertius's Bid for Immortality	21
A Lament	23
Bon Voyage—and Vice Versa	24
Fragment	25
On the Uses of Adversity	26
After Hearing "Robin Hood"	27
Maud Muller Mutatur	28
The Carlyles	31
If Amy Lowell Had Been James Whitcomb Riley	35
If the Advertising Man Had Been Gilbert	37
If the Advertising Man Had Been Praed, or Locker	39
Georgie Porgie	40
On First Looking into Bee Palmer's Shoulders	41
To a Vers Librist	43
How Do You Tackle Your Work?	45
Recuerdo	48
On Tradition	51
Unshackled Thoughts on Chivalry, Romance, Adventure, Etc.	52
Results Ridiculous	53
Regarding (1) the U. S. and (2) New York	54
Broadmindedness	55
The Jazzy Bard	56
Lines on and from "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations"	57
Thoughts in a Far Country	58
When You Meet a Man from Your Own Home Town	59
The Shepherd's Resolution	61
"It Was a Famous Victory"	62
On Profiteering	63
Despite	64
The Return of the Soldier	65
"I Remember, I Remember"	66
The Higher Education	68
War and Peace	69
Fifty-Fifty	70
"So Shines a Good Deed in a Naughty World"	71
Vain Words	72
On the Importance of Being Earnest	73
It Happens in the B. R. Families	74
Abelard and Heloïse	77
Lines Written on the Sunny Side of Frankfort Street	79
Fifty-Fifty	80
To Myrtilla	81
A Psalm of Labouring Life	82
Ballade of Ancient Acts	84
To a Prospective Cook	85
Variation on a Theme	86
"Such Stuff as Dreams"	88
The Ballad of Justifiable Homicide	89
The Ballad of the Murdered Merchant	90
A Gotham Garden of Verses	92
Lines on Reading Frank J. Wilstach's "A Dictionary of Similes"	94
The Dictaphone Bard	95
The Comfort of Obscurity	97
Ballade of the Traffickers	98
To W. Hohenzollern, on Discontinuing The Conning Tower	100
To W. Hohenzollern, on Resuming The Conning Tower	103
Thoughts on the Cosmos	105
On Environment	106
The Ballad of the Thoughtless Waiter	107
Rus Vs. Urbs	109
"I'm Out of the Army Now"	110
"Oh Man!"	112
An Ode in Time of Inauguration	113
What the Copy Desk Might Have Done	124
Song of Synthetic Virility	133

SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN

Present Imperative

Horace: Book I, Ode 11

"Tu ne quaesieris—scire nefas—quem mihi; quem tibi——"

AD LEUCONOEN

Nay, query not, Leuconoë, the finish of the fable;
Eliminate the worry as to what the years may hoard!
You only waste your time upon the Babylonian Table—
(Slang for the Ouija board).

And as to whether Jupiter, the final, unsurpassed one,
May add a lot of winters to our portion here below,
Or this impinging season is to be our very last one—
Really, I'd hate to know.

Apply yourself to wisdom! Sweep the floor and wash the dishes,
Nor dream about the things you'll do in 1928!
My counsel is to cease to sit and yearn about your wishes,
Cursing the throws of Fate.

My! how I have been chattering on matters sad and pleasant!
(Endure with me a moment while I polish off a rhyme).
If I were you, I think, I'd bother only with the present—
Now is the only time.

The Doughboy's Horace

Horace: Book III, Ode 9

"Donec eram gratus tibi——"

HORACE, PVT. ——TH INFANTRY, A. E. F., WRITES:

While I was fussing you at home
You put the notion in my dome
That I was the Molasses Kid.
I batted strong. I'll say I did.

LYDIA, ANYBURG, U. S. A., WRITES:

While you were fussing me alone
To other boys my heart was stone.
When I was all that you could see
No girl had anything on me.

HORACE:

Well, say, I'm having some romance
With one Babette, of Northern France.
If that girl gave me the command
I'd dance a jig in No Man's Land.

LYDIA:

I, too, have got a young affair
With Charley—say, that boy is there!
I'd just as soon go out and die
If I thought it'd please that guy.

HORACE:

Suppose I can this foreign wren
And start things up with you again?
Suppose I promise to be good?
I'd love you, Lyd. I'll say I would.

LYDIA:

Though Charley's good and handsome—oh, boy!
And you're a stormy, fickle doughboy,
Go give the Hun his final whack,
And I'll marry you when you come back.

From: Horace
To: Phyllis
Subject: Invitation

Book IV, Ode 11

"Est mihi nonum superantis annum——"

Phyllis, I've a jar of wine,
(Alban, B. C. 49),
Parsley wreaths, and, for your tresses,
Ivy that your beauty blesses.

Shines my house with silverware;
Frondage decks the altar stair—
Sacred vervain, a device
For a lambkin's sacrifice.

Up and down the household stairs
What a festival prepares!
Everybody's superintending—
See the sooty smoke ascending!

What, you ask me, is the date
Of the day we celebrate?
13th April, month of Venus—
Birthday of my boss, Mæcenas.

Let me, Phyllis, say a word
Touching Telephus, a bird
Ranking far too high above you;
(And the loafer doesn't love you).

Lessons, Phyllie, may be learned
From Phaëton—how he was burned!
And recall Bellerophon was
One equestrian who thrown was.

Phyllis, of my loves the last,
My philandering days are past.
Sing you, in your clear contralto,
Songs I write for the rialto.

Advising Chloë

Horace: Book I, Ode 23

"Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloë——"

Why shun me, my Chloë? Nor pistol nor bowie
Is mine with intention to kill.
And yet like a llama you run to your mamma;
You tremble as though you were ill.

No lion to rend you, no tiger to end you,
I'm tame as a bird in a cage.
That counsel maternal can run for The Journal—
You get me, I guess.... You're of age.

To An Aged Cut-up

Horace: Book III, Ode 15

I

"Uxor pauperis Ibyci,
Tandem nequitiæ fige modum tuæ——"

IN CHLORIN

Dear Mrs. Ibycus, accept a little sound advice,
Your manners and your speech are over-bold;
To chase around the sporty way you do is far from nice;
Believe me, darling, you are growing old.

Now Pholoë may fool around (she dances like a doe!)
A débutante has got to think of men;
But you were twenty-seven over thirty years ago—
You ought to be asleep at half-past ten.

O Chloris, cut the ragging and the roses and the rum—
Delete the drink, or better, chop the booze!
Go buy a skein of yarn and make the knitting needles hum,
And imitate the art of Sister Suse.

Chloris, lay off the flapper stuff;
What's fit for Pholoë, a fluff,
Is not for Ibycus's wife—
A woman at your time of life!

Ignore, old dame, such pleasures as
The shimmy and "the Bacchus Jazz";
Your presence with the maidens jars—
You are the cloud that dims the stars.

Your daughter Pholoë may stay
Out nights upon the Appian Way;
Her love for Nothus, as you know,
Makes her as playful as a doe.

No jazz for you, no jars of wine,
No rose that blooms incarnadine.
For one thing only are you fit:
Buy some Lucerian wool—and knit!

His Monument

Horace: Book III, Ode 30

"Exegi monumentum aere perennius——"

The monument that I have built is durable as brass,
And loftier than the Pyramids which mock the years that pass.
Nor blizzard can destroy it, nor furious rain corrode—
Remember, I'm the bard that built the first Horatian ode.

I shall not altogether die; a part of me's immortal.
A part of me shall never pass the mortuary portal;
And when I die my fame shall stand the nitric test of time—
The fame of me of lowly birth, who built the lofty rhyme!

Ay, fame shall be my portion when no trace there is of me,
For I first made Æolian songs the songs of Italy.
Accept I pray, Melpomene, my modest meed of praise,
And crown my thinning, graying locks with wreaths of Delphic bays!

Glycera Rediviva!

Horace: Book I, Ode 19

"Mater sæva Cupidinum"

Venus, the cruel mother of
The Cupids (symbolising Love),
Bids me to muse upon and sigh
For things to which I've said "Good-bye!"

Believe me or believe me not,
I give this Glycera girl a lot:
Pure Parian marble are her arms—
And she has eighty other charms.

Venus has left her Cyprus home
And will not let me pull a pome
About the Parthians, fierce and rough,
The Scythian war, and all that stuff.

Set up, O slaves, a verdant shrine!
Uncork a quart of last year's wine!
Place incense here, and here verbenas,
And watch me while I jolly Venus!

On a Wine of Horace's

What time I read your mighty line,
O Mr. Q. Horatius Flaccus,
In praise of many an ancient wine—
You twanged a wicked lyre to Bacchus!—
I wondered, like a Yankee hick,
If that old stuff contained a kick.

So when upon a Paris card
I glimpsed Falernian, I said: "Waiter,
I'll emulate that ancient bard,
And pass upon his merits later."
Professor Mendell, quelque sport,
Suggested that we split a quart.

O Flaccus, ere I ceased to drink
Three glasses and a pair of highballs,
I could not talk; I could not think;
For I was pickled to the eyeballs.
If you sopped up Falernian wine
How did you ever write a line?

"What Flavour?"

Horace: Book III, Ode 13

"O fons Bandusiæ, splendidior vitro——"

Worthy of flowers and syrups sweet,
O fountain of Bandusian onyx,
To-morrow shall a goatling's bleat
Mix with the sizz of thy carbonics.

A kid whose budding horns portend
A life of love and war—but vainly!
For thee his sanguine life shall end—
He'll spill his blood, to put it plainly.

And never shalt thou feel the heat
That blazes in the days of Sirius,
But men shall quaff thy soda sweet,
And girls imbibe thy drinks delirious.

Fountain whose dulcet cool I sing,
Be thou immortal by this Ode (a
Not wholly meretricious thing),
Bandusian fount of ice-cream soda!

The Stalling of Q. H. F.

Horace: Epode 14

"Mollis inertia cur tantam diffuderit imis"

Mæcenas, you fret me, you worry me
Demanding I turn out a rhyme;
Insisting on reasons, you hurry me;
You want my iambics on time.
You say my ambition's diminishing;
You ask why my poem's not done.
The god it is keeps me from finishing
The stuff I've begun.

Be not so persistent, so clamorous.
Anacreon burned with a flame
Candescently, crescently amorous.
You rascal, you're doing the same!
Was no fairer the flame that burned Ilium.
Cheer up, you're a fortunate scamp,
... Consider avuncular William
And Phryne, the vamp.

On the Flight of Time

Horace: Book I, Ode 2

"Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi"

AD LEUCONOEN

Look not, Leuconoë, into the future;
Seek not to find what the Answer may be;
Let no Chaldean clairvoyant compute your
Time of existence.... It irritates me!

Better to bear what may happen soever
Patiently, playing it through like a sport,
Whether the end of your breathing is Never,
Or, as is likely, your time will be short.

This is the angle, the true situation;
Get me, I pray, for I'm putting you hep:
While I've been fooling with versification
Time has been flying.... Both gates!
Watch your step!

The Last Laugh

Horace: Epode 15

"Nox erat et cælo fulgebat Luna sereno——"

"How sweet the moonlight sleeps," I quoted,
"Upon this bank!" that starry night—
The night you vowed you'd be devoted—
I'll tell the world you held me tight.

The night you said until Orion
Should cease to whip the wintry sea,
Until the lamb should love the lion,
You would, you swore, be all for me.

Some day, Neæra, you'll be sorry.
No mollycoddle swain am I.
I shall not sit and pine, by gorry!
Because you're with some other guy!

No, I shall turn my predilection
Upon some truer, fairer Jane;
And all your prayer and genuflexion
For my return shall be in vain.

And as for you, who choose to sneer, O,
Though deals in lands and stocks you swing,
Though handsome as a movie hero,
Though wise you are—and everything;

Yet, when the loss of her you're mourning,
How I shall laugh at all your woe!
How I'll remind you of this warning,
And laugh, "Ha! ha! I told you so!"

Again Endorsing the Lady

Book II, Elegy 2

"Liber eram et vacuo meditabar vivere lecto——"

I was free. I thought that I had entered Love's Antarctic Zone.
"A truce to sentiment," I said. "My nights shall be my own."
But Love has double-crossed me. How can Beauty be so fair?
The grace of her, the face of her—and oh, her yellow hair!

And oh, the wondrous walk of her! So doth a goddess glide.
Jove's sister—ay, or Pallas—hath no statelier a stride.
Fair as Ischomache herself, the Lapithanian maid;
Or Brimo when at Mercury's side her virgin form she laid.

Surrender now, ye goddesses whom erst the shepherd spied!
Upon the heights of Ida lay your vestitures aside!
And though she reach the countless years of the Cumæan Sibyl,
May never, never Age at those delightful features nibble!

I thought that I was wholly free,
That I had Love upon the shelf;
"Hereafter," I declared in glee,
"I'll have my evenings to myself."
How can such mortal beauty live?
(Ah, Jove, thine errings I forgive!)

Her tresses pale the sunlight's gold;
Her hands are featly formed, and taper;
Her—well, the rest ought not be told
In any modest family paper.
Fair as Ischomache, and bright
As Brimo. Quæque queen is right.

O goddesses of long ago,
A shepherd called ye sweet and slender.
He saw ye, so he ought to know;
But sooth, to her ye must surrender.
O may a million years not trace
A single line upon that face!