Classic Poem

1. Park Avenue Fiddle

When the guests are growing drowsy
And are also growing dull,
The room too full of matrons and
The matrons far too full,

The tea all drunk, the cakes all down
And gossip in a pall,
The hostess nods for one frail man
To lift the funeral.

He tucks his fiddle underneath
A thin chin if he's poor
And floods the room with Bach's Chaconne —
He'll soon be shown the door:

But if he saws the Humoresque
And other tunes like that,
She'll write him out a Wall Street check
And help his chin grow fat.

2. Park Avenue Portraits

Signor has painted her portrait —
Signor's from a foreign shore —
And he who's given her one chin less
Will get ten orders more

From friends of the happy lady,
The envious social clan
Who'd love to pose and be portrayed
By such a gentleman.

3. Park Avenue Busts

Monsieur's an accomplished sculptor,
A talented realist:
When rich Americans sit for him
He turns idealist

And thumbs some faithful likeness
Of what they'd like to be:
Another stony replica
Of aristocracy.

4. Chicken Salad

Each Sunday night she gathers in
Her sad-eyed repertory
Of fiddlers, flutists, pianists
And underfed tenori,

And one by one and two by two
They pipe and sing and play
With one eye on the music score
And one on the buffet.

5. Globe Wernicke

The Bensons have a library
Of leather seraphim,
But some are somewhat high for her
And some too thick for him:

So while he scans the New York Times,
The grave sheet he loves most,
She gallops through the Philadelphia
Saturday Evening Post.

6. Royal Wedding

The piety of Junior James
Was equal to the pride
His plutocratic parents took
In choosing him a bride:

They thought of all the blessed things
That rise from our own soil
And chose the gushing offspring of
Some Oklahoma oil.

7. Once A Month

John Gore can work but once a month,
He's much too stout for more;
His tenants work six days a week
At jobs they all abhor:

His home is on Park Avenue,
The flats two blocks away:
And once a month he takes a walk
For which the tenants pay.

8. Once A Year

The town now has democracy
From Fifth and Park to Third,
And Robinson, the millionaire,
And Brown, his proud chauffeur,

Step into booths and mark a cross
Beneath the Elephant,
Or vice versa give the Tiger
One as elegant,

And then they drive away again,
Each with an equal frown:
The noble Robinson behind
The even nobler Brown.

9. Inch Worms

The limousines and limousines
Are crawling in a line
Toward the trees of Central Park
Two inches at a time:

The folk are glad to see the leaves
Of spring along the Mall
And turn about and inch by inch
They see the same leaves fall!

10. The Faithful Dollar

Each sunny Sunday morning
Or Sunday morning rain
They enter their pet churches and
Go sound asleep again,

And when the organ offertory
Brass begins to din
They place a faithful dollar on
The plate for last week's sin.

11. Liebestod

She hammers a grand tornado,
Then comes a touch of spring,
And then the whole world comes to grief
As two last faint tones sing:

Two guests applaud Encore, Encore,
The hostess sheds a tear
And looks for James to dry it off,
But he's asleep, poor dear:

He's had a long hard day downtown,
A long hard evening too,
And soon he'll have to smile and pay
For all these artists do:

He feels a nudge, sits up once more
And just as he clears his brain,
The heartless pianist begins
The same damn thing again.

12. Near Relatives

We envy the near relatives
Of Miser Pettigrew:
Though they weep now, tomorrow they
Will get the residue

Of all the gold they used to hate,
The gold they now adore
As poor old Pete breathes less and less
And they breathe more and more.