Classic Poem

Adds a Tombstone from The East River Anthology .

MAURICE VERNON

I was just sixteen,
In the queer twisting of a delayed adolescence,
When I came to New York;
To study the classics, as my mother said.
And, according to my father, to become a man.
I liked the prep. school I attended —
It was such a pleasant place to get away from
Often I neglected Terence for the tango,
Or Livy for Lillian Lorraine.
I was just learning to wear my dinner-jacket
In that " carefully careless " manner indorsed by Vogue ,
When my father died bankrupt;
Throwing me upon my own resources.
Then I found I hadn't any.
So, knowing how to use neither my hands nor my brain,
I remembered my feet
And became a chorus man.
For years I was with Ziegfeld and K. and E.
Then the dance-craze came and swept me to the heights.
I became a teacher to the most exclusive —
My name was in electric lights six feet high.
The clippings I collected, placed end to end,
Would have reached from Dantzig to Walsingham and back.
Then one night I turned my ankle.
When I was able to get up again
The public had flocked to another favorite
So I entered an Endurance Dancing Carnival
And waltzed myself to death.

There is a great, saintly-looking fellow here
Whom some call Vitus.
And many dervishes
And a fine sultry-eyed girl
By the curious name of Miriam.
But most of all we love to watch a certain princess;
Her veils uncoil like seven serpents
And she carries a dark head on a silver platter.
She dances to it forever.