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Title: Good
Author: Edmund Vance Cooke [
More Titles by Cooke]
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.
[The end]
Edmund Vance Cooke's poem: Good
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