COMPLAINT OF A POET MANQUÉ

We judge by appearance merely:

If I can n't think strangely, I can at least look queerly.

So I grew the hair so long on my head

That my mother would n't know me,

Till a woman in a night-club said,

As I was passing by,

“Hullo, here comes Salome...”

I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass,

And, oh Salome; there I was —

Positively jewelled, half a vampire,

With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily

Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire

Over the brink of the crag of sense,

Looking down from perilous eminence

Into a gulf of windy night.

And there's straw in my tempestuous hair,

And I'm not a poet: but never despair!

I'll madly live the poems I shall never write.