BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT {1}



I have scribbled in verse and in prose,
I have painted "arrangements in greens,"
And my name is familiar to those
Who take in the high class magazines;
I compose; I've invented machines;
I have written an "Essay on Rhyme";
For my county I played, in my teens,
But--I am not in "Men of the Time!"

I have lived, as a chief, with the Crows;
I have "interviewed" Princes and Queens;
I have climbed the Caucasian snows;
I abstain, like the ancients, from beans, -
I've a guess what Pythagoras means,
When he says that to eat them's a crime, -
I have lectured upon the Essenes,
But--I am not in "Men of the Time!"

I've a fancy as morbid as Poe's,
I can tell what is meant by "Shebeens,"
I have breasted the river that flows
Through the land of the wild Gadarenes;
I can gossip with Burton on skenes,