JONSON

O rare Ben Jonson, you who wrote

“To Celia,”

Presager of that later note,

“Bedelia,”

To you, rare Ben, our hat we raise

For all your poems and your plays.

You knew, forsooth, if Shakespeare's work

Was taken,

Like copies by a scrawling clerk,

From Bacon;

You would have known of that flimflam

Without a hidden cryptogram.

O rare Ben Jonson, with your pen

You labored,

And with brave lords and gentlemen

You neighbored —

You never turned out feeble farce

In sentences that would not parse.

To managers you ne'er were made

To grovel,

And, Ben, you never called a spade

A shovel —

Where you wrote sentences risque

We now have costumes very gay.

O rare Ben Jonson, when you asked

That lady

To drink, her name you never masked

As “Sadie,”

Nor did you call her “Creole Belle”

Or half the song names we might tell.

“Drink to me only with thine eyes!”

Your sighing

Showed you no steins of any size

Were buying.

But from the way the stanzas run,

You, rare Ben Jonson, were well done.