BALLADE OF NEGLECTED MERIT

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,

I can imitate Irving ( the Mime ),

And my sketches are quainter than Keene's,

But — I am not in “Men of the Time!”

So the tower of mine eminence leans

Like the Pisan, and mud is its lime;

I'm acquainted with Dukes and with Deans,

But — I am not in “Men of the Time!”