Page:In Other Words (1912).djvu/112

 

“The Poems of Eugene Field”

(Somewhat in the Fieldian manner.)

 

No gold-reguerdoned poet I to puff a book for pelf,
For even I am forced to buy the books I praise myself,
Albeit there be those that think that when I laud a tome
Its publisher invites me in to make myself at home.
Could you but see the monthly bills that stare me in the face,
You readily would see that such is not the happy case;
Yet once again I toot the horn, again the pen I wield
To advertise the Poetry of Eugene Field.

Not Swinburne with his lovely lines that lilt their way along,
Not Byron’s burning poetry, nor Wordsworth’s simple song,
Not Kipling’s virile balladry, nor Marlowe’s mighty line,
Not Tennyson’s pellucid rhyme, nor Shelley’s odes divine,

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