The Shepherd's Resolution

If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?

BY OUR OWN JEROME D. KERN, AUTHOR OF "YOU'RE HERE AND I'M HERE"

I DON'T care if a girl is fair

If she doesn't seem beautiful to me,

I won't waste away if she's fair as day,

Or prettier than meadows in the month of May;

As long as you are there for me to see,

I don't care and you don't care

How many others are beyond compare--

You're the only one I like to have around.

I won't mind if she's everything combined,

If she doesn't seem wonderful to me,

I won't fret if she's everybody's pet,

Or considered by all as the one best bet;

As long as you and I are only we,

I don't care and you don't care

How many others are beyond compare,

You're the only one I like to have around.

"It Was a Famous Victory"

            (1944)

IT was a summer evening;

Old Kaspar was at home,

Sitting before his cottage door--

Like in the Southey pome--

And near him, with a magazine,

Idled his grandchild, Geraldine.

"Wy don't you ask me," Kaspar said

To the child upon the floor,

"Why don't you ask me what I did

When I was in the war?

They told me that each little kid

Would surely ask me what I did.

"I've had my story ready

For thirty years or more."

"Don't bother, Grandpa," said the child;

"I find such things a bore.

Pray leave me to my magazine,"

Asserted little Geraldine.

Then entered little Peterkin,

To whom the gaffer said:

"You'd like to hear about the war?

How I was left for dead?"

"No. And, besides," declared the youth,

"How do I know you speak the truth?"

Arose the Wan, embittered man,

The hero of this pome,

And walked, with not unsprightly step,

Down to the Soldiers' Home,

Where he, with seven other men,

Sat swapping lies till half-past ten.

On Profiteering

ALTHOUGH I hate

  A profiteer

With unabat-

  Ed loathing;

Though I detest

  The price they smear

On pants and vest

  And clothing;

Yet I admit

  My meed of crime,

Nor do one whit

  Regret it;

I'd triple my

  Price for a rhyme,

If I thought I

  Could get it.

Despite

THE terrible things that the Governor

Of Kansas says alarm me;

And yet somehow we won the war

In spite of the Regular Army.

The things they say of the old N.G.

Are bitter and cruel and hard;

And yet we walloped the enemy

In spite of the National Guard.

Too late, too late, was our work begun;

Too late were our forces sent;

And yet we smeared the horrible Hun

In spite of the President.

"What a frightful flivver this Baker is!"

Cried many a senator;

And yet we handed the Kaiser his

In spite of the Sec. of War.

A sadly incompetent, sinful crew

Is that of the recent fight;

And yet we put it across, we do,

In spite of a lot of spite.

The Return of the Soldier

LADY when I left you

  Ere I sailed the sea,

Bitterly bereft you

  Told me you would be.

Frequently and often

  When I fought the foe,

How my heart would soften,

  Pitying your woe!

Still, throughout my yearning,

  It was my belief,

That my mere returning

  Would annul your grief.

Arguing ex parte,

  Maybe you can tell

Why I find your heart A.

  W.O.L.

"I Remember, I Remember"

I REMEMBER, I remember

The house where I was born;

The rent was thirty-two a month,

Which made my father mourn.

He said he could remember when

His father paid the rent;

And when a man's expenses did

Not take his every cent.

I remember, I remember--

My mother telling my cousin

That eggs had gone to twenty-six

Or seven cents a dozen;

And how she told my father that

She didn't like to speak

Of things like that, but Bridget now

Demanded four a week.

I remember, I remember--

And with a mirthless laugh--

My weekly board at college took

A jump to three and a half.

I bought an eighteen-dollar suit,

And father told me, "Sonny,

I'll pay the bill this time, but, Oh,

I am not made out of money!"

I remember, I remember,

When I was young and brave

And I declared, "Well, Birdie, we

Shall now begin to save."

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 'tis little joy

To know I'm farther off from wealth

Than when I was a boy.

The Higher Education

(Harvard's prestige in football is a leading factor. The best players in the leading preparatory schools prefer to study at Cambridge, where they can earn fame on the gridiron. They do not care to be identified with Yale and Princeton.--JOE VILA in the Evening Sun.)

"FATHER," began the growing youth,

  "Your pleading finds me deaf;

Although I know you speak the truth

  About the course at Shef.

But think you that I have no pride,

  To follow such a trail?

I cannot be identified

  With Princeton or with Yale."

"Father," began another lad,

  Emerging from his prep;

"I know you are a Princeton grad,

  But the coaches have no pep.

But though the Princeton profs provide

  Fine courses to inhale;

I cannot be identified

  With Princeton or with Yale."

"I know," he said, "that Learning helps

  A lot of growing chaps;

That Yale has William Lyon Phelps,

  And Princeton Edward Capps.

But while, within the Football Guide,

  The Haughton hosts prevail,

I cannot be identified

  With Princeton or with Yale."

War and Peace

"THIS war is a terrible thing," he said,

"With its countless numbers of needless dead;

A futile warfare it seems to me,

Fought for no principle I can see.

Alas, that thousands of hearts should bleed

For naught but a tyrant's boundless greed!"

         *   *   *   *

Said the wholesale grocer, in righteous mood,

As he went to adulterate salable food.

Spake as follows the merchant king:

"Isn't this war a disgusting thing?

Heartless, cruel, and useless, too;

It doesn't seem that it can be true.

Think of the misery, want and fear!

We ought to be grateful we've no war here.

         *   *   *   *

"Six a week"--to a girl--"That's flat!

I can get a thousand to work for that."

Fifty-Fifty

FOR something like eleven summers

I've written things that aimed to teach

Our careless mealy-mouthéd mummers

To be more sedulous of speech.

So sloppy of articulation

So limping and so careless they,

About distinct enunciation,

Often I don't know what they say.

The other night an able actor,

Declaiming of some lines I heard,

I hailed a public benefactor,

As I distinguished every word.

But, oh! the subtle disappointment!

Thorn on the celebrated rose

And fly within the well-known ointment!

(Allusions everybody knows).

Came forth the words exact and snappy.

And as I sat there, that P.M.,

I mused, "Was I not just as happy

When I could not distinguish them?"

"So Shines a Good Deed in a Naughty World"

THERE was a man in our town, and he

was wondrous rich;

He gave away his millions to the colleges

and sich;

And people cried: "The hypocrite! He ought

to understand

The ones who really need him are the children

of this land."

When Andrew Croesus built a home for children

who were sick,

The people said they rather thought he did it

as a trick,

And writers said: "He thinks about the drooping

girls and boys,

But what about conditions with the men whom

he employs?"

There was a man in our town who said that he

would share

His profits with his laborers, for that was

only fair,

And people said: "Oh, isn't he the shrewd and

foxy gent?

It cost him next to nothing for that free

advertisement."

There was a man in our town who had the perfect

plan

To do away with poverty and other ills of man,

But he feared the public jeering, and the folks

who would defame him,

So he never told the plan he had, and I can hardly

blame him.

Vain Words

HUMBLE, surely, mine ambition;

   It is merely to construct

Some occasion or condition

   When I may say "usufruct*."          [enjoying the fruits of another's labors]

Ernest am I and assiduous;

   Yet I'm certain that I shan't amount

To a lot till I use "viduous,"

   "Indiscerptible," and "tantamount."

On the Importance of Being Earnest

"GENTLE Jane was as good as gold,"

   To borrow a line from Mr. Gilbert;

She hated War with a hate untold,

   She was a pacifistic filbert.

If you said "Perhaps"--she'd leave the hall.

You couldn't argue with her at all.

"Teasing Tom was a very bad boy,"

   (Pardon my love for a good quotation).

To talk of war was his only joy,

   And his single purpose was preparation.

            *      *      *      *      *

And what both of these children had to say

I never knew, for I ran away.

It Happens in the B.R. Families

'TWAS on the shores that round our coast

   From Deal to Newport lie

That I roused from sleep in a huddled heap

   An elderly wealthy guy.

His hair was graying, his hair was long,

   And graying and long was he;

And I heard this grouch on the shore avouch,

   In a singular jazzless key:

"Oh, I am a cook and a waitress trim

   And a maid of the second floor,

And a strong chauffeur and a housekeeper,

   And the man who tends the door!"

And he shook his fists and he tore his hair,

   And he started to frisk and play,

Till I couldn't help thinking the man had been drinking,

   So I said (in the Gilbert way):

"Oh, elderly man, I don't know much

   Of the ways of societee,

But I'll eat my friend if I comprehend

   However you can be

"At once a cook and a waitress trim

   And the maid of the second floor,

And a strong chauffeur and a housekeeper,

   And the man who tends the door."

Then he smooths his hair with a nervous air,

   And a gulp in his throat he swallows,

And that elderly guy he then lets fly

   Substantially as follows:

"We had a house down Newport way,

   And we led a simple life;

There was only I," said the elderly guy,

   And my daughter and my wife.

"And of course the cook and a waitress trim

   And the maid of the second floor,

And a strong chauffeur and a housekeeper,

   And the man who tends the door."

"One day the cook she up and left,

   She up and left us flat.

She was getting a hundred and ten a mon-

   Th, but she couldn't work for that.

"And the waitress trim was her bosom friend,

   And she wouldn't stay no more;

And our strong chauffeur eloped with her

   Who was the maid of the second floor.

"And we couldn't get no other help,

   So I had to cook and wait.

It was quite absurd," wept the elderly bird.

   "I deserve a better fate.

"And I drove the car and I made the beds

   Till the housekeeper up and quit;

And the man at the door found that a bore,

   Which is why I am, to wit:

"At once a cook and a waitress trim

   And the maid of the second floor,

And a strong chauffeur and a housekeeper,

   And the man who tends the door."

Abelard and Heloïse

["There are so many things I want to talk to you about." Abelard probably said to Heloïse, "but how can I when I can only think about kissing you?" --KATHARINE LANE in the Evening Mail.]

SAID Abelard to Heloïse:

"Your tresses blowing in the breeze

Enchant my soul; your cheek allures;

I never knew such lips as yours."

Said Heloïse to Abelard:

"I know that it is cruel, hard,

To make you fold your yearning arms

And think of things besides my charms."

Said Abelard to Heloïse:

"Pray, lets discuss the Portuguese;

Their status in the League of Nations.

. . . . Come, slip me seven osculations*.          [kisses]

"The Fourteen Points," said Heloïse,

"Are pure Woodrovian fallacies."

Said Abelard: "Ten times fourteen

The points you have, O beaucoup queen!"

"Lay off," said Heloïse, "all that stuff.

I've heard the same old thing enough."

"But," answered Abelard, "your lips

Put all my thoughts into eclipse."

"O Abelard," said Heloïse,

"Don't take so many liberties."

"I do it but to show regard."

And Heloïse told her chum that night

That Abelard was Awful Bright;

And--thus is drawn the cosmic plan--

She loved an Intellectual Man.

Lines Written on the Sunny Side of Frankfort Street

SPORTING with Amaryllis in the shade,

   (I credit Milton in parenthesis),

Among the speculations that she made

         Was this:

"When"--these her very words--"when you return,

   A slave to duty's harsh commanding call,

Will you, I wonder, ever sigh and yearn

         At all?"

Doubt, honest doubt, sat then upon my brow.

   (Emotion is a thing I do not plan).

I could not fairly answer then, but now

         I can.

Yes, Amaryllis, I can tell you this,

   Can answer publicly and unafraid:

You haven't any notion how I miss

         The shade.

Fifty-fifty

[We think about the feminine faces we meet in the streets, and experience a passing melancholy because we are unacquainted with some of the girls we see.--From "The Erotic Motive in Literature," by ALBERT MORDELL.]

WHENE'ER I take my walks abroad,

  How many girls I see

Whose form and features I applaud

  With well-concealéd glee!

I'd speak to many a sonsie* maid,          [scots: comely, handsome]

  Or willowy or obese,

Were I not fearful, and afraid

  She'd yell for the police.

And Melancholy, bittersweet,

  Marks me then as her own,

Because I lack the nerve to greet

  The girls I might have known.

Yet though with sadness I am fraught,

  (As I remarked before),

There is one sweetly solemn thought

  Comes to me o'er and o'er:

For every shadow cloud of woe

  Hath argentine alloy*;          [a silver lining]

I see some girls I do no know

  And feel a passing joy.

To Myrtilla

TWELVE fleeting years ago my Myrt,

   (Ehu fugaces!* maybe more)          [alas, the fleeting (years)]

I wrote of the directoire skirt

         You wore.

Ten years ago, Myrtilla mine,

   The hobble skirt engaged my pen.

That was, I calculate, in Nine-

         Teen Ten.

The polo coat, the feathered lid,

   The phony furs of yesterfall,

The current shoe--I tried to kid

         Them all.

Vain every vitriolic bit,

   Silly all my sulphuric song.

Rube Goldberg said a bookful; it

         'S all wrong.

Bitter the words I used to fling

   But you, despite my angriest Note,

Were never swayed by anything

         I wrote.

So I surrender. I am beat.

   And, though the admission rather girds,

In any garb you're just to sweet

         For words.

A Psalm of Labouring Life

TELL me not, in doctored numbers,

   Life is but a name for work!

For the labour that encumbers

   Me I wish that I could shirk.

Life is phony! Life is rotten!

   And the wealthy have no soul;

Why should you be picking cotton,

   Why should I be mining coal?

Not employment and not sorrow

   Is my destined end or way;

But to act that each tomorrow

   Finds me idler than today.

Work is long, and plutes are lunching;

   Money is the thing I crave;

But my heart continues punching

   Funeral time-clocks to the grave.

In the world's uneven battle,

   In the swindle known as life,

Be not like the stockyard's cattle--

   Stick your partner with the knife!

Trust no boss, however pleasant!

   Capital is but a curse!

Strike,--strike in the living present!

   Fill, oh fill the bulging purse.!

Lives of strikers all remind us

   We can make our lives a crime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Bills for double overtime.

Charges that, perhaps another,

   Working for a stingy ten

Bucks a day, some mining brother

   Seeing, shall walk out again.

Let us, then, be up and striking,

   Discontent with all of it;

Still undoing, still disliking,

   Learn to labour--and to quit.

Ballade of Ancient Acts

AFTER HENLEY

WHERE are the wheezes they essayed

And where the smiles they made to flow?

Where's Caron's seltzer siphon laid,

A squirt from which laid Herbert low?

Where's Charlie Case's comic woe

And Georgie Cohan's nasal drawl?

The afterpiece? The olio?

Into the night go one and all.

Where are the japeries, fresh or frayed,

That Fields and Lewis used to throw?

Where is the horn that Shepherd played?

The slide trombone that Wood would blow?

Amelia Glover's l.f. toe?

The Rays and their domestic brawl?

Bert Williams with "Oh, I Don't Know?"

Into the night go one and all.

Where's Lizzy Raymond, peppy jade?

The braggart Lew, the simple Joe?

And where the Irish servant maid

That Jimmie Russel used to show?

Ben Harney's where? And Artie Hall?

Nash Walker, Darktown's grandest beau?

Into the night go one and all.

L'ENVOI

Prince, though our children laugh "Ho! Ho!"

At us who gleefully would fall

For acts that played the Long Ago,

Into the night go one and all.

To a Prospective Cook

CURLY locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be ours?

Thou shalt not wash dishes, nor yet weed the flowers,

But stand in the kitchen and cook a fine meal,

And ride every night in an automobile.

Curly Locks, Curly Locks, come to us soon!

Thou needest not to rise until mid-afternoon;

Thou mayest be Croatian, Armenian, or Greek;

Thy guerdon* shall be what thy askest per week.          [reward]

Curly Locks, Curly Locks, give us a chance!

Thou shalt not wash windows, nor iron my pants.

Oh, come to the cosiest of seven-room bowers,

Curly Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be ours?