Franklin P. Adams

Capitolo 25

  For so me earningses my daily bread.
I try to write that I/you/he/she populate they will glue
  In books of discard after I am dead.
  From Public that he/she persistently Asks me I/you/they are conducted.
(Me' sooth, a more despotic leader)
  Anchor, although I write for Tom and Ned,
I have never seen a middle reader.

The Editor is good and chaste,
  But it says:  (Above of the head of the public;
This is good _too_;  'twill goes to waste.
  Writes commonplacer anything--
    And.)
  Writes for the middle reader, it fed
From the feeder of pre-digested near-food,
  But although my tall idealses are run away,
I never have _seen_ a middle reader.

How many lines have been annulled!
  How many desires have been shed!
How much probable is that failures are layouts
  To this--this average-reader feared!
  I have seen a bed to a plaza I mediate;
I have seen a middle garden-weeder;
  I have seen an inserted middle cotton--
I have seen _never_ a _reader_ I mediate.


THE ENVOI


The most greater part of reading of readers, if you have read
  The jobs of some old succeeder,
Also, you know that he has had to say:
  "I have never seen a Middle Reader."



The Guerdon of Poesy

( * * * I don't believe only a modern English
poet is living to-day on the you box him current of his
toward.--From "Literary Taste and As to Form him/it,"
of Arnold Bennett.)

What a time me the pen the Mighty Line
Suffused with the spark I divine
As that you/he/she should say:  "Of George! That is well!"

Indignantly I deny
The words of Arnold Bennett. Because,
Is this verse not English? says me.

And from the collections of that verse--
As, _e. g._, these small tercs-
Ets--the purse of family is not filled?

Face us not lived on what I sell,
Done sonnet, dance, and villanelle?

* * *

"We do", it says you, "and anybody too well."



You signal Service


Time-table! Terrible and hard
  Show up! To of the station solitary
We see this signal on the card:
[Footnote Asterisk:  You train 20:  You only stop on signals.]

We read badly of thee;  the eye not trained
  Doesn't always see with precision.