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Title: The Poet Is Bidden To Manhattan Island
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts [
More Titles by Roberts]
Dear Poet, quit your shady lanes
And come where more than lanes are shady.
Leave Phyllis to the rustic swains
And sing some Knickerbocker lady.
O hither haste, and here devise
Divine ballades before unuttered.
Your poet's eyes must recognize
The side on which your bread is buttered!
Dream not I tempt you to forswear
One pastoral joy, or rural frolic.
I call you to a city where
The most urbane are most bucolic.
'Twill charm your poet's eyes to find
Good husbandmen in brokers burly;--
Their stock is ever on their mind;
To water it they rise up early.
Things you have sung, but ah, not seen--
Things proper to the age of Saturn--
Shall greet you here; for we have been
Wrought quaintly, on the Arcadian pattern.
Your poet's lips will break in song
For joy, to see at last appearing
The bulls and bears, a peaceful throng,
While a lamb leads them--to the shearing!
And metamorphoses, of course,
You'll mark in plenty, à la Proteus:
A bear become a little horse--
Presumably from too much throat-use!
A thousandfold must go untold;
But, should you miss your farm-yard sunny,
And miss your ducks and drakes, behold
We'll make you ducks and drakes--of money!
Greengrocers here are fairly read.
And should you set your heart upon them,
We lack not beets--but some are dead,
While others have policemen on them.
And be the dewfall dear to you,
Possess your poet's soul in patience!
Your notes shall soon be falling dew,--
Most mystical of transformations!
Your heart, dear Poet, surely yields;
And soon you'll leave your uplands flowery,
Forsaking fresh and bowery fields,
For "pastures new"--upon the Bowery!
You've piped at home, where none could pay,
Till now, I trust, your wits are riper.
Make no delay, but come this way,
And pipe for them that pay the piper!
[The end]
Charles G. D. Roberts's poem: Poet Is Bidden To Manhattan Island
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