Unpublished Parodies

I’m still elastic. I have often thought
The charm of bridge superior to whist’s.
Nothing because it’s new I set at naught.
But oh these tale-despising novelists
And play-eliminating dramatists —
I find it hard to grasp what they are at. . . .
Art’s not their game? They are Evangelists? . . .
I must confess I don’t quite follow that.

I used to haunt the studios and fought
For Manet’s sunshine and for Whistler’s mists
And all that Corot had divinely wrought.
But now I’m told the Post-Impressionists
And still more recently the Futurists
Have knocked those masters into a cocked hat
And even A. E. John no more exists. . . .
I must confess I don’t quite follow that.

I seek the Grail that I have always sought.
Yea! though I dote, the old young zeal persists:
I still dine out to learn what may be taught,
But when great dames, with diamonded wrists
And ears and breasts, say they are Socialists
Biding a flood in which no Ararat
Will be reserved for the capitalists,
I must confess I don’t quite follow that.

England! I love you and your Colonists,
But Mr. Kipling, throwing up his hat,
Says only cads may be Imperialist. . . .
I must confess I don’t quite follow that.

The one quality that Max
Conspicuously lacks
Is a certain High Seriousness, which may be met
In the Pall Mall Gazette.

Dear Esther S. — I’m in distress,
It’s very sad! My taste is bad.
The men that boost the work of Proust
(Those scholars and those gentlemen,
Those erudite and splendid men,
Of whom the chief is Scott-Moncrieff)
All leave me cold. Perhaps I’m old?
‘The reason why, I cannot tell,
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell. . . .’
But why not like the late Marcel? . . .
Perhaps he wrote not very well?
This, bien entendu, cannot be.
He was a Prince of Paragons
(As undergraduates all agree —
Or did in nineteen twenty-three —
With full concurrence of the Dons).
I only know that all his Swanns
Are now, as ever, geese to me.
Pity the blindness of poor M.B.!
P.S. How sad that I’m alive!
October, nineteen twenty-five.

I met Musette
In the water closet —
Or if it wasn’t there, where was it?
And let me see:
Was it not Mimi
That made such passionate love to me
In the W.C.?
Which was it?

Honored Doctor Dryasdust,
Look to your laurels: you really must.
You seem so very moist indeed
When one compares you with Herbert Read.

SCENE: A Room in Windsor Castle TIME: The Present
Enter a Lady-in-waiting and a Lord-in-waiting
SHE: Slow pass the hours — ah, passing slow!
My doom is worse than anything
Conceived by Edgar Allan Poe:
The Queen is duller than the King.
HE: Lady, your mind is wandering;
You babble what you do not mean.
Remember, to your heartening,
The King is duller than the Queen.
SHE: NO, most emphatically no!
To one firm-rooted fact I cling
In my now chronic vertigo:
The Queen is duller than the King.
HE: Lady, you lie. Last evening
I found him with a Rural Dean,
Talking of district-visiting ....
The King is duller than the Queen.
SHE: At any rate he doesn’t sew!
You don’t see him embellishing
Yard after yard of calico ....
The Queen is duller than the King.
Oh, to have been an underling
To, say, the Empress Josephine!
HE: Enough of your self-pitying!
The King is duller than the Queen.
SHE (firmly): The Queen is duller than the King.
HE: Death then for you shall have no sting.
[Stabs her and, as she falls dead, produces phial
from breast pocket of coat.]
Nevertheless, sweet friend Strychnine,
[Drinks.]
The King — is — duller than — the Queen.
[Dies in terrible agony.]

And now, lad, all is over
’Twixt you, your love, and the clover;
So keep a stiff upper lip
And shrink not, lad, nor shiver,
But walk you down to the river
And take your final dip.
Vide hunc libellum passim

Here fair young Daisy Miller lies.
O, Speculator, pass not by!
What though her spirit will not rise?
Her tomb’s price will, quite possibly.

So this is Utopia, is it? Well
I beg your pardon. I thought it was Hell.