More Songs From Vagabondia | Page 6

king let the lady upbraid him
For burning
her buns in a batch;
Why Hebrew is written left-handed;
And what Venus did with her
arms;
What the Conqueror said when he landed;
The acres in

Horace's farms;
The use of hirundo_ and _passer:
All this you will probe to the pith

As a freshman at Wellesley or Vassar
Or Bryn Mawr--though _I_
prefer Smith.
You will solve every riddle in Browning;
And learn how to paddle
and swim;
And save other people from drowning;
And play basket
ball in the gym.
But you'll scorn to know why there's a tax on
All reading that isn't a
bore,
When Mallarmé's filtered through Saxon
And the Symbolists
come to the fore.
All winter you'll read mathematics
(Oh, you'll be a terrible "prod"),

And in June, at the Senior Dramatics,
You will play like a star. But
it's odd,
Since you'll quote every cadence in Kipling
And Arnold (of course I
mean Matt),
If you don't make a bard of some stripling
Before he
knows where he is at.
I am sure you'll be lovely as Trilby,
The loveliest bud of the year;

But remember, Karlene, I shall still be
Your doting old godfather,
dear.
When you hear Archimedes' conundrum,
Like enough you'll be
wanting to try
Whether one little girl contra mundum
Can't lift the
old thing with a pry!
You will turn up your nose at poor "Thy will,"
With a haughty
agnostical sniff,
Till you find the imperative "I will"
Has a future
conditional "if."
And then you will come to your senses,
And find out why women
were made;
And men too; and why there are fences
All round the

whole lot where you strayed,
While you wore yourself down to a shadow
Yet failed to discover
your sphere;
For you'll see Adam down in the meadow
And think
what a goosey you were!
And then when your classmates are singing
Once more for good-by
the old glees,
And the round painted lanterns are swinging
And
sputtering out in the trees,
When everything stales and withers
Except the great stars up above,

Your heartstrings will all go to smithers,
You'll just be one crumple
of love.
And Adam will be such a duffer
(Dear fellow, I mean), he'll contrive,

Till you make him, to not make him suffer,
The happiest mortal
alive.
Oh, it makes me too ill to continue,
Imagining how it will be
When
some dapper youth comes to win you
And smiles condescension on
me!
I shall loathe his immaculate breeding,
And advise you in time to
refuse.
To think he will share in your reading,
And even unbutton
your shoes!
And yet when for that precious laddie
Your hair is all crinkled and
curled,
I guess you'll be just like your daddy,
The dearest old soul
in the world!
CONCERNING KAVIN.
When Kavin comes back from the barber,
Although he no longer is
young,
One cheek is as soft as his heart,
And the other as smooth as
his tongue.

KAVIN AGAIN.
It is not anything he says,
It's just his presence and his smile,
The
blarney of his silences
That cocker and beguile.
ACROSS THE TABLE. To A. L. L.
Here's to you, Arthur! You and I
Have seen a lot of stormy weather,

Since first we clinked cups on the sly
At school together.
The winds of fate have had their will
And blown our crafts so far
apart
We hardly knew if either still
Were on the chart.
But now I know the love of man
Is more than time or space or fate,

And laugh to scorn the powers that ban,
With you for mate.
It's good to have you sitting by,
Old man, to prove the world no botch,

To shame the devil with your eye
And pass the Scotch.
BARNEY McGEE.
Barney McGee, there's no end of good luck in you,
Will-o'-the-wisp,
with a flicker of Puck in you,
Wild as a bull-pup and all of his pluck
in you,--
Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see!--
Eyes like the
lakes of Killarney for clarity,
Nose that turns up without any
vulgarity,
Smile like a cherub, and hair that is carroty,--
Wow,
you're a rarity, Barney McGee!
Mellow as Tarragon,
Prouder than
Aragon--
Hardly a paragon,
You will agree--
Here's all that's fine
to you!
Books and old wine to you!
Girls be divine to you,

Barney McGee!
Lucky the day when I met you unwittingly,
Dining where vagabonds
came and went flittingly.
Here's some Barbera to drink it befittingly,

That day at Silvio's, Barney McGee!
Many's the time we have
quaffed our Chianti there,
Listened to Silvio quoting us Dante there,--


Once more to drink Nebiolo spumante there,
How we'd pitch
Pommery into the sea!
There where the gang of us
Met ere Rome
rang of us,
They had the hang of us
To a degree.
How they would
trust to you!
That was but just to you.
Here's o'er their dust to you,

Barney McGee!
Barney McGee, when you're sober you scintillate,
But when you're in
drink you're the pride of the intellect; Divil a one of us ever came in till
late,
Once at the bar where you happened to be--
Every eye there
like a spoke in you centering,
You with your eloquence, blarney, and
bantering--
All Vagabondia shouts at your entering,
King of the
Tenderloin, Barney McGee!
There's no satiety
In your