Written by
Carl Sandburg |
BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be?
Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons?
Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night?
In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer at the roller coaster parks,
Wherever figure eights are carved, by skates in winter, by roller coasters in summer,
Wherever the whirligigs are going and chicken spanish and hot dog are sold,
There you come, giggling baby vamp, there you come with your blue baby eyes, saying:
Take me along.
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Written by
Thomas Hardy |
Had I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:
"You see that man?" -- I might have looked, and said,
"O yes: I see him.
One that boat has brought
Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban's Head.
So commonplace a youth calls not my thought.
"
"You see that man?" -- "Why yes; I told you; yes:
Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;
And as the evening light scants less and less
He looks up at a star, as many do.
"
"You see that man?" -- "Nay, leave me!" then I plead,
"I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,
And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:
I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!"
"Good.
That man goes to Rome -- to death, despair;
And no one notes him now but you and I:
A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,
And bend with reverence where his ashes lie.
"
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Written by
Robert Burns |
STILL anxious to secure your partial favour,
And not less anxious, sure, this night, than ever,
A Prologue, Epilogue, or some such matter,
’Twould vamp my bill, said I, if nothing better;
So sought a poet, roosted near the skies,
Told him I came to feast my curious eyes;
Said, nothing like his works was ever printed;
And last, my prologue-business slily hinted.
“Ma’am, let me tell you,” quoth my man of rhymes,
“I know your bent—these are no laughing times:
Can you—but, Miss, I own I have my fears—
Dissolve in pause, and sentimental tears;
With laden sighs, and solemn-rounded sentence,
Rouse from his sluggish slumbers, fell Repentance;
Paint Vengeance as he takes his horrid stand,
Waving on high the desolating brand,
Calling the storms to bear him o’er a guilty land?”
I could no more—askance the creature eyeing,
“D’ye think,” said I, “this face was made for crying?
I’ll laugh, that’s poz—nay more, the world shall know it;
And so, your servant! gloomy Master Poet!”
Firm as my creed, Sirs, ’tis my fix’d belief,
That Misery’s another word for Grief:
I also think—so may I be a bride!
That so much laughter, so much life enjoy’d.
Thou man of crazy care and ceaseless sigh,
Still under bleak Misfortune’s blasting eye;
Doom’d to that sorest task of man alive—
To make three guineas do the work of five:
Laugh in Misfortune’s face—the beldam witch!
Say, you’ll be merry, tho’ you can’t be rich.
Thou other man of care, the wretch in love,
Who long with jiltish airs and arts hast strove;
Who, as the boughs all temptingly project,
Measur’st in desperate thought—a rope—thy neck—
Or, where the beetling cliff o’erhangs the deep,
Peerest to meditate the healing leap:
Would’st thou be cur’d, thou silly, moping elf?
Laugh at her follies—laugh e’en at thyself:
Learn to despise those frowns now so terrific,
And love a kinder—that’s your grand specific.
To sum up all, be merry, I advise;
And as we’re merry, may we still be wise.
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