Classic Poem

By the waters of Boston we sat down and wept
The aerated waters they drink — in hotels
Till they showed us the place where the liquors are kept
In a town like a hive full of cellars for cells.

But though fountains of wine or of water might foam
There flowed in our pockets a fountain of ink;
And we clasped to our bosoms the pens of our home
And licked them when looking for something to drink.

If the pen made the poet, the habit the monk,
What songs of our country had soothed us the while,
When five Prohibitionists, palpably drunk
Scarce raised in the exile one radiant smile.

It is thousands of miles over land, over sea,
From Omaha City to Overroads door
But we said; the great prairies will leave, as they flee,
Like infinite shadows, the things that are sure.

We said, they are certain, the field or the friend
From which we are far or of which we were fond;
That the donkeys still hammer down Aylesbury End,
And a dog is still drinking in Candlemas Pond.

Jock wears the white fur of a blameable life
As misguided he flees from the Captain of Guides;
With the donkey of young convalescents at strife
The Jack of our Beanstalk triumphantly rides.

And the dog and the donkey were dreams of our night
And we pondered the riddle and never could say
Why the donkey is brown when the lady is white,
And the puppy is white when the lady is Gray.

She first, for whose mad and magnanimous action,
The pen should be turned to a fountain of praise
Our duchess, our Lady, the Queen of Distraction,
The loser of hair-pins, the finder of strays.

And she too, who sent us the pen of her picking,
Whose fairy-like foot made Trotsky trot,
Is she not also alive — and kicking
Possibly quadrupeds; possibly not.

But too many the memories and names that we number
So returned from the round of the earth and its ends.
We have given one hour out of labour and slumber
To the muse that men serve in the Temple of friends.