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Title: Get Next
Author: Edmund Vance Cooke [
More Titles by Cooke]
Chap. I., verse 1, is where you'll find
The text of what is in my mind
If, haply, you are so inclined.
Chap. I., verse 1--the primal rule
For saint or sinner, sage or fool,
No matter what his church or school.
Though you may call it slangy solely,
Though you may term it flippant wholly,
Truth still is truth and is not vexed;
I write this rhyme to prove the text--
Get Next.
Suppose I sought some lonely height
And dipped a stylus in the light
Of welding worlds and sought to write
Upon the highest, deepest blue
My message to Sam Smith and you.
The chances are it would not do.
You would not risk your neck to read
My much too altitudinous screed,
And I, chagrined and half-perplexed,
Had missed you when I missed my text--
Get Next.
Suppose you have a breakfast food
Which you conceive I should include
Within my lat-and-longitude.
'T is not enough to have the stuff,
But you must post, and praise, and puff,
Until I memo. on my cuff,
Among my most important notes--
Be sure to bring home Oatless Oats.
And then you know that I'm annexed,
Because you followed out the text--
Get Next.
Get next! get next! and hold it true
There's one you must get nextest to,
And that important one is you.
Be not of those who, uncommuned
With their own skins, have all but swooned
From some imaginary wound,
But strip the rags from off your soul
And find you are not maimed, but whole!
'T is but a flea-bite which has vexed
As soon as you've applied the text--
Get Next.
[The end]
Edmund Vance Cooke's poem: Get Next
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