Classic Poem

TO J. M. BARRIE

What are you busy at, Barrie, my laddie-boy?
Is it you're golfing, pursued by a caddie-boy?
Man, are you preaching, romancing or joking now?
What is the blend of tobacco you're smoking now?
Maybe you're writing in hoot-awa' dialect
Sketches of orthodox elders and high, elect
Kirkmen of Glasgow, or Thrums, or Glen Quharity,
Long on religion yet lacking in charity,
Banning all pleasures as covertly sinister.
Give us some news of your braw Little Minister
All in your true, Ecclefechan-Glengarry-tone—
Where is the voice that is sweeter than Barrie-tone?

There on my table with covers all gilded up,
Peter and Wendy —the book you have builded up
Out of the games we've all played but forgot about,
Out of the dreams that you know such a lot about—
Spreads, to recall to us poor ephemerides,
How once we roved in the Golden Hesperides,
Roved in our childhood when dreams were realities.
Come! Let's adventure in new principalities;
Fly through the blue empyrean, ecstatical;
Skirmish with Injuns and villains piratical;
Battle with lions and monsters reptilian;
Slip from the gnashings of jaws crocodilian;
Massacre grizzlies and tigers Hyrcanian;
Wander in wonderful caves subterranean;
Build in those underworlds marvelous palaces
Proving the dogmas of physics pure fallacies;
Dance with the mermaids and cope with those subtle fish,
Shark and octopus and terrible cuttle-fish;
Sport in the tree-tops with monkeys that hand to us
Mangoes and nuts and are perfectly grand to us;
Dig buried treasure in islands with cannibals;
Conquer like Cæsars, Napoleons, Hannibals!
Be but our leader, and fearless we'll follow you,
Aye, though the maw of Leviathan swallow you!

Old are the dreamers who, when they awake, believe
All that they dreamed in their childhood was make-believe.
Older are they who, engrossed in endeavor, land
Seldom or never at all in your Neverland.
Oldest are they that forget, in their gravity,
E'en that they dreamed in their youth and depravity,
Plodding and grubbing to win just a penny more,
Too dull to sigh for Arcadia any more!
Surely, such renegades we shall not show ourselves.
Must we grow up—like them? Not if we know ourselves!