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Title: Variation On A Theme
Author: Franklin P. Adams [
More Titles by Adams]
Notably fond of music, I dote on a clearer tone
Than ever was blared by a bugle or zoomed by a saxophone;
And the sound that opens the gates for me of a Paradise revealed
Is something akin to the note revered by the blessed Eugene Field,
Who sang in pellucid phrasing that I perfectly well recall
Of the clink of the ice in the pitcher that the boy brings up the hall.
But sweeter to me than the sparrow's song or the goose's autumn honks
Is the sound of the ice in the shaker as the barkeeper mixes a Bronx.
Between the dark and the daylight, when I'm worried about The Tower,
Comes a pause in the day's tribulations that is known as the cocktail hour;
And my soul is sad and jaded, and my heart is a thing forlorn,
And I view the things I have written with a sickening, scathing scorn.
Oh, it's then I fare with some other slave who is hired for the things he writes
To a Den of Sin where they mingle gin--such as Lipton's, Mouquin's, or Whyte's,
And my spirit thrills to a music sweeter than Sullivan or Puccini--
The swash of the ice in the shaker as he mixes a Dry Martini.
The drys will assert that metallic sound is the selfsame canon made
By the ice in the shaker that holds a drink like orange or lemonade;
But on the word of a travelled man and a bard who has been around,
The sound of tin on ice and gin is a snappier, happier sound.
And I mean to hymn, as soon as I have a moment of leisure time,
The chill susurrus of cocktail ice in an adequate piece of rhyme.
But I've just had an invitation to hark, at a beckoning bar,
To the sound of the ice in the shaker as the barkeeper mixes a Star.
June 30, 1919.
[The end]
Franklin P. Adams's poem: Variation On A Theme
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